


My Known Unknown

by shetlandowl



Series: My Known Unknown [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, True Lies (1994)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Established Relationship, M/M, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-08 06:13:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8833513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shetlandowl/pseuds/shetlandowl
Summary: That True Lies AU nobody asked for, set in a world where Stane Inc is the world's foremost weapons manufacturer, and Tony's employer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to the IMZY community who have been so supportive and so kind: y'all make me feel like I'm part of a fandom for the first time, one where I don't feel alone or kooky for flailing about how much I adore these two chuckleheads. 
> 
> Special thanks to sabrecmc, ishipallthings, and willidothefandango for holding my insecure little hands through this.

The office door was forced open with the rare flare of urgency, and revealed half of Sam’s person as he spilled over the threshold and hissed, “Man, what’re you doing? Get up, you’ll be late for the meeting.”

Tony spared minimal energy and concentration to flick a hand in Sam’s general direction to wave him and his concern off.

“Not going,” Tony clarified, just in case his gesture had been unclear, but their combined effect seemed to transmit an invitation instead.

Sam offered a noncommittal hum and leaned over Tony’s shoulder to peer at the three monitors on the desk in front of him. “What’re you working on?” he wondered out loud before asking, “Are those ...collapsable EODs?”

Tony gave him a considering glance before turning back to the screen and keying up the schema to explode across all screens for full details. “Self-contained EOD, adaptable - albeit rudimentary - AI, suitable to chemical, biological, radioactive, and ballistic agents.”

Sam seemed torn between staring at his friend and the blueprints. “That’s a thing AIs can do?”

“This one will,” Tony said. He reached to pull up his first stab at the coding when Sam quickly intervened, still absorbed in the original blueprints.

“You sure your math is right?”

“Is it ever wrong?”

“12 kiloton payload?” Sam stared at the screen and muttered through the calculations again before just shaking his head clear of it, because clearly he had escaped the confines of reality in the past forty seconds. “It can handle chemical, biological, radioactive, or ballistic agents yielding upwards of 12 kilotons?”

“12.17 kilotons, and it’s not _or_ , it’s _and_ , ” Tony corrected with a smirk. “Precision is the name of the game, sugarbear.”

“Tony,” Sam groaned and scrubbed his hands over his face, all but shaking his colleague to vent his frustration. “Tony, what the—you should be presenting this to the board - the board that is _meeting right now!_ They’ll be eating out of your palms for shit like this.”

“You mean like they did last quarter, when they ran with Don’s hybrid jet engine instead?” Tony asked with a smile that was all teeth. “That watered-down ginger stepson of my prototype from last year?”

“That glorified airborne Prius with a gun rack? Sure,” said Sam, and that at least earned a huff of vindicated amusement. “But that’s why you should - show them this, Tony, we need this shit. America needs this shit.”

“I sent Rushman a few ideas,” Tony said, but then he shrugged it off as if trying to shake off the unwanted thrill of anticipation.

“Well, alright. That’s good,” Sam conceded, clapping Tony on the shoulder. “Hey, since you’ll be sitting on your ass all day, how about a few rounds in the gym for lunch?”

“You’re disgusting,” Tony groaned. “Who works out during lunch?”

Sam snorted and shoved away from his perch on Tony’s desk. “I’m sure your idol would,” he said all too happily, “and that husband of yours.”

Tony spared a skeptical glance at the miniature Captain America helmet that sat on his desk next to a framed old photo of himself and Steve. His eyes caught and lingered on the framed picture, a candid moment Pepper had captured at the dinner where Tony had introduced Steve to her and Rhodey.

“Captain America’d have better things to do,” Tony said finally when he rejoined the conversation. Then, with a begrudgingly adoring smile, he had to admit, “But Steve would do it.”

“Clever guy, Steve. Will we ever get to meet him?”

“Never cross the streams, Sam,” Tony warned him. “You’d like him better than me.”

“That depends. Is he smarter than you?”

Tony shrugged. “Jury’s still out.”

***

“You know, it’s a good thing I don’t have persistent trauma about ice cold bodies of water,” Steve muttered down the line as he hauled himself out of the frozen lake and laid in the snow on blissfully solid ground for a few seconds to regroup. Not two feet to his left, his tanks and fins silently disappeared into the dark, cold abyss he had just swam through.

“Then next time I’ll take the swim and you can take the van,” Clint groused. “It stinks in here.”

“Chatter,” Coulson interrupted. “Hawkeye, eyes on entry points; Captain, you ready?”

Steve grunted in the affirmative and pushed himself back up to his feet. Behind the relative cover behind the lakeside boathouse, he shucked off the rubber drysuit with practiced efficiency and tore into an attached water-proof bag to find the final pieces to polish off his uniform for the mission: subvocal ear-piece transceiver, Glock-22, shoulder holster, and a bowtie.

Minutes later he emerged from the shadows in an immaculate tuxedo, buttoning his evening jacket over the silk cummerbund as he casually strode through the back service entrance. He walked in through the kitchen, navigating the scurrying staff as if he owned the place, even stealing a moment to finger-taste the fondue display in passing and barking at the nearest staff in French,

“This needs more cognac. Fetch the _Grand Marnier_ , now!”

With a scramble of flustered staffers rushing behind him to spike the chocolate fondue, Steve breezed through into the main hall where the party already was in full swing. The upper echelons from near and far filled the opulent space, from billionaires and their arm candy, heirs and heiresses to old money and new fortunes, to arms dealers and military leaders, all milled about, one more dazzling and diamond-crusted than the next, politely enjoying their own company.

Steve made his way through the ranks, greeting and catching up with strangers in an array of foreign dialects as he made his way through the room.

“Got him!” Clint announced into the silence. “Big Daddy Petrobucks—man, is Raza punching above his weight or what, check her out.” He kicked back from the monitor to let Coulson see, too. “Right?”

Steve cast a glance over his shoulder on his way up the grand staircase and hummed in agreement. “She sure is beautiful.”

“She’s familiar,” Coulson murmured quietly to himself, though both he and Clint were primarily concerned with half-dozen screens with various surveillance footage as Steve made his way through to the second-floor library and pulled himself up from the window to the third-floor balcony attached to Raza’s private office.

“I’m in,” Steve said softly under his breath, and in the van Coulson’s laptop came to life with a mirrored display of the private desktop Steve had accessed.

“These are encrypted, I’ll need a few minutes.”

“Understood,” said Steve and left the computer work to Coulson to make his own exit. He pulled the door open a sliver, paused long enough to hear the all-clear from Barton, then smoothly slipped out into the hallway to make his way back to the party, smiling politely as he passed a guard on his way down the stairs. When he caught sight of another pair of armed guards marching towards the stairs, he smoothly turned left and caught a flute of champagne on his way to inspect a large fragment of a temple frieze of a war chariot drawn by four horses.

“Security goons are looking kinda anxious there, Cap,” Clint commented over the line. “What’s the exit strategy?”

Barton’s warning was ignored in favor of another presence, and Steve turned to smile at the woman standing beside him with an openly appreciative gaze.

“Magnificent,” he said, then inclined his head to the bas-relief. “Don’t you think?”

“Devastating,” she agreed. “Léonide Lorraine. I thought I knew most of Raza’s friends, but it seems I was mistaken. You I would have remembered.”

“Grant,” Steve said and offered his hand to her. “Steve Grant.”

Coulson sighed audibly over the comms and immediately went to task on his side of the van. Moments later, he filled both Steve and Barton in over the line. “Léonide Lorraine, formerly US Army, art and antiquities dealer, specializing in ancient Persia from present-day Syria.”

“This is Persian, if I’m not mistaken?” Steve remarked and gestured to the four horses and intricate chariot relief.

“Very good,” she smiled. She leaned in closer to pick a flute of champagne off a passing waiter’s tray, and remained tucked so close to his side that he could make out the smell of her hair from her delicate perfume. “This piece in particular is from the 6th century, B.C. Are you a fan of the period, Mr. Grant?”

“I can’t deny it,” he confessed with a warm smile. “Art is a passion of mine.”

“Trouble incoming,” Barton warned in an undertone. “Guards are swarming the docks; I think they found your suit. They’re making their way to the house.”

“Do you dance, Ms. Lorraine?”

In the van, Coulson and Clint exchange a long-suffering look, fully aware of how the next five minutes would play out. Fortunately, a buzz from Coulson’s computer interrupted the rising frustration.

“Files unlocked. We got him.”

“You hear that, Cap?” Clint said in a valiant attempt to reign Steve back on schedule. “Time to pack up, man.”

The silence from the other end of the line gave Coulson cause for concern, too, and he paused in his preliminary analyses to echo, “Captain? Captain!” When not even static came back through he turned to Barton and asked, “Did he mute the comms?”

From two feet away, Clint groaned and face-planted into his narrow desk, tossing his headset aside. “Forget it, Phil: it’s a goddamn tango.”

Through their screens they watched Steve and Léonide deftly twist and parry across the dance floor, well-matched and aggressively passionate, until minutes later, as the song ends, Steve swept her up from a deep backwards bend, drawing her in close to his body as she twirled obligingly into the crook of his arm, their lips mere inches apart.

“I blame Tony,” Clint muttered into his desk. “He taught him that move; I was there when he taught him that move.”

Absently, Coulson reached across to rub soothing circles across Barton’s shoulders. He opened his mouth to say something when through the comms they heard Léonide’s voice again.

“Call me, if you’d like to see some of my other pieces.”

“I’d like that,” Steve smiled, and through the screen they both saw him take her hand and brush his lips softly over the back of her knuckles before stepping away and making his exit.

“Son of a bitch,” Clint glowered, but Coulson spoke over him instead. “Captain, what’s your exit strategy?”

“I thought I’d try the front door,” Steve admitted casually as he made his way through the throngs of people, seemingly untroubled by the guards.

“He’s walking out the front door,” Clint deadpanned in disbelief. “Boss, what—”

“He’s not walking out—” Coulson started to say when the mountain shook violently with a sudden explosion, and Clint hurried to pull the handbrake as the van skidded sideways across the icy road. From a half-mile away, both men stared at the fireball rising through the darkness.

“Here we go,” Clint muttered under his breath and shoved the handbrake down again, kicked the van into gear and sped down the road with increasingly hairy turns.

“Captain, what’s your twenty? I need a position—” Coulson’s words died in his throat as out of the darkness a skier launched across the road from a slope above, leaping clean over the van and careening down the side of the mountain. A half-dozen armed skiers hurtled through the same slope in pursuit, and Clint leaned out of the driver-side window to take each of them out.

“I can’t tell if I love him or hate him,” Clint noted as they both watched an armed helicopter rising in the distance.

“It’s too soon to tell,” Coulson answered mildly, already loading up a series of guns and rifles in the back. “Drive or shoot?”

Barton leapt out from behind the wheel and ran back into the van. “Get behind the wheel, Boss. I’ll take the fuckers down.”

***

Ten hours later, Coulson parked the black sedan at the white picket fence outside a modest home in Dupont Circle. “You got everything?” he asked, and reached over to accept the Steven Grant passport and wallet as Steve emptied out his pockets. Once they were bagged, Coulson pulled open a briefcase to complete the tired ceremony.

“Steven Stark wallet; Stark passport, stamped; plane ticket stub to Santa Fe; hotel receipt for S. Stark,” Coulson listed off as he handed them across to Steve. “Present for the husband,” he added finally, handing a soft, gift-wrapped package.

Steve’s brows drew together as he looked at the gift, and finally asked, “What is it?”

“It’s for Tony,” was all Coulson said, too tired or too professional to sound smug. “Got everything?”

Steve frowned but shrugged it off, too eager to get home to nitpick. He patted himself down one last time to be sure he was clean of Grant before shoving the door open and stepping out of the car. “I’m clean. I’ll be in for debrief at nine. Good night, sir.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Coulson asked before Steve slammed the door shut, and from out of his pocket he held up the plain gold ring.

Steve hung his head, too tired to know whether he should laugh or cry anymore, and finally he leaned back into the car to accept his wedding band, slipping it back into its familiar place on his finger. “Thank you, sir.”

He shut the car door and watched Coulson drive away before he made his way home and slipped into the house. Quietly he toed off his shoes at the front door and abandoned his coat and briefcase over an armchair in the den before silently making his way upstairs, all but holding his breath in an effort not to wake Tony. Steve suspected even Tony would be asleep at four in the morning, and if the vaguely human lump he spotted under the covers in their bed was in fact his husband, his suspicions had proven true.

Steve threw off his clothes and only just remembered to brush his teeth before crawling under the covers himself, stretching carefully across the bed to press a soft kiss to Tony’s shoulder. Next to him, Tony stirred and murmured under his breath, eventually shifting and turning towards him to roll against Steve for a sleepy hug.

Tony nuzzled into his shoulder and brushed a small kiss across his skin, breathing him in deeply. “Hey, babe,” he murmured, still drowsy and mostly asleep. “How’s the flight?”

“Fine, sweetheart,” Steve whispered, and he pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. “Stay asleep, Tony.”

Tony hummed in agreement, shifted a little closer in bed to tangle their legs together, and he soon dropped off. Steve wrapped his arms around him in return and rested his cheek against the top of Tony’s head, but he remained miserably awake, so he held Tony close and stared out the window into the night sky.

***

When Tony stirred awake the next morning, it was to a cold, empty bed and a house that smelled delightfully like freshly brewed coffee. He stretched luxuriously under the covers, arching until some bones cracked and popped, and then he relaxed again and slowly started to push himself to sit up. It wasn’t until he had ran his hands through his hair and picked up his watch off the nightstand that he noticed Steve was leaning in the doorway, quietly watching him with two steaming cups of coffee in hand.

“Good morning, stranger,” Tony rumbled in his sleep-gravely voice, and he watched (im)patiently as Steve walked over, kissing him good morning and offering him a cup of coffee. He took a deep, satisfying drink before quietly asking, “How was your conference? Did you make everyone jealous?”

“That’s the typical reaction when you tell people you work for the Smithsonian,” Steve admitted without much irony. Tony’s smirked up at him in delight, and Steve was powerless to stay away, folding down to the floor on his knees between Tony’s legs and stretching up for a second, coffee flavored kiss.

Then he tried again. “It was a success,” he whispered, a story just for Tony to hear. “There’s a lot of people I’m looking forward to getting in touch with; if all goes well, it may be possible to start working on a joint exhibit on the treatment of American territories during World War II.”

“Let me take you to dinner tonight,” Tony asked, apropos of nothing. He combed his fingers through Steve’s hair and cupped his face in his hands, taking a few moments of silence to just take him in. “Can we do that? Could you be home by seven?”

Steve smiled up at him and turned his head to press a soft kiss to the palm of his left hand. “Nothing would make me happier.”

***

“Tones!” Rhodey yelled down the line from wherever he was that Tony definitely shouldn't know. (Damascus.) “Happy birthday, man! You’re what now, 36? 39? 52?”

“Who is this?” Tony asked loftily. “I’m busy and important, don’t waste my time.”

“Alright, Mr. Busy and Important, how’s your birthday going?” Rhodey said with a grin in his voice, but the hesitation on Tony’s end, however brief, was enough of a clue to sober him up. “Did Steve forget again?”

“At least he’s home this time,” Tony shrugged, ineffective as it was over the phone. Rhodey would know anyway; he was good about those things. “I’m taking him out to dinner tonight.”

Rhodey snorted something that sounded like _yeah right_ , but he mostly kept it to himself. Instead he casually offered, “Do you want me to shoot him? I can do that, I’ll be in town in a week. Just a flesh-wound, nothing too damaging.”

“Don’t shoot my Steve, Rhodey,” Tony said, approaching a serious tone of voice. “Maybe get him a calendar though.”

“If you say so, Tony,” he said gently, then moved on to the meat of the conversation: “Look, I can’t talk that long, but I want to see you when I’m in D.C., you hear? Clear your schedule one week from tomorrow.”

“Loud and clear, honeybear,” said Tony, and he leaned over in his seat to scribble a note to self into his schedule. “Mental health day one week from Thursday.”

From the other end, Rhodey winced. “That bad?”

“I’m twelve for twelve rejections this month,” Tony explained in a forcefully calm voice. “That makes seventy-three for seventy-five this year.”

Rhodey was silent for a long time before he finally dared to say, biting the words out with care, “You and me, Tony, next Thursday. I’ll be there.” Then, more gently, he repeated, “Happy birthday, Tony.”

“Thanks, Cocoa Puff. Stay safe,” he said and ended the call, leaning back in his seat. It wasn’t another minute before the theme to _Jaws_ started to play, but before he could decide if he needed to hear Pepper’s disappointment, too, a knock on the door saved him.

With his weight braced against the doorframe and the door handle, Sam leaned halfway into his office as was his preference. “You busy, Tony? My math isn’t coming out right for the ejector seat, and my jet’s about to become a fucking catapult.”

The endless possibilities in designing ejector seats raced with unrestrained glee through Tony’s mind and he lept out of his chair to follow Sam out. “Take me to your 21st century airborne catapult, my good sir.”

Except (and he really should have seen this coming) Sam’s office turned out to be a blatant ambush: there stood Bruce with a cupcake, and Scott with a bottle of champagne. A bottle of single malt scotch sat on Sam’s desk with a bow tied around its neck, presumably to be enjoyed at a later time.

“Fuck you all,” Tony glowered with as much conviction as he could muster for the grudgingly pleasant surprise, but Bruce lit the candle that celebrated his _14th birthday_ and Sam already had a camera rolling so there was little left to do but make a wish and blow it out. “To world peace,” he muttered through a poorly-restrained grin. “Don’t you people have work to do?”

“Told you he’d be ungrateful,” Bruce deadpanned, but he crossed the room to pull Tony into a hug. “Happy birthday, Tony. It’s homemade; I hope you’re not lactose intolerant.”

“Don’t sweat it, Jolly Green,” he finally laughed and snatched the little cheesecake cupcake right off the plate, hopping up to seat himself on Sam’s desk and let everyone settle in. Soon enough, everyone had a coffee mug full of champagne in their hands and the cheesecake was nothing but a delightful memory.

“Seriously. You made this?”

“Yeah,” Bruce started to say, then quickly corrected himself. “Well, Betty and I’ve been taking these cooking classes, you know, and the recipe is from class, but we made it. She wishes you a good birthday, too, by the way.”

Tony stared for a moment before finally deciding on a smile, genuinely pleased. “Domesticity looks good on you, Brucie.”

“It’s the little things,” Bruce said quietly, but his smile was sincere.

“Tell me about it,” Tony agreed, but something about his tone must have wistful enough or otherwise clued the rest of them in, because they all perked up. “What?”

“So I take it you didn’t celebrate with a birthday get-away this weekend?” Scott guessed.

“Are you kidding me? Steve had to go out of town.”

“Shocking,” Bruce muttered into his mug, but Sam looked quite cross. “You’re new to this, don’t worry: you’ll catch up in no time.”

“Steve sounds like an awesome guy,” said Sam. “Museum curator, volunteers with the VA—and don’t y’all go to the farmer’s market?”

“He _is_ a great man,” Tony answered immediately.

“He’s just always busy,” Scott clarified. “If he’s not busy, he’s asleep.”

“In Steve’s defense, they have been married for six years. Together seven?” Bruce offered, mostly to Scott. “It’s not easy keeping things exciting that long.”

“Not fair, no,” said Scott. “You and Betty have been together how many years, and you were just off to Napa last month to like, lap wine out of each other’s navels for three days.”

“Who—how—”

“Damn, Bruce,” Sam said, impressed, at the same time as Tony muttered, “You bitch.”

There was a knock on the door, and a secretary poked her head into the office. “Sa—Tony, there you are. There’s a call for you from a Ty? Should I ask him to call back later?”

“No!” Tony said immediately and hopped off the table. “Now’s good, now’s great—I’ll take it in my office. Thanks for the party, fellas.”

The three men left in the room watched Tony and the secretary step out. Once the door shut behind them both, Bruce quietly asked, “Who the hell is Ty?”

Both Sam and Scott shrugged, clueless.

***

“I thought you’d be late this morning, Steve, but this is ridiculous,” Clint accused as soon as Steve came by his office. “Come on. Coulson’s waiting, we’re about to get our asses handed to us by Fury.”

“Late?” Steve frowned and looked at his watch, then also confirmed the time on his phone. “I’m five minutes early.”

Clint snorted and shouldered open the door leading through to the bullpen Fury prowled. “Didn’t you hear? For us today everything will run on Fury’s Pissed Standard Time: we’ll always be late.”

“What? We got the intelligence, didn’t we?”

“I don’t think blowing up a seventeenth century Swiss castle qualifies as covert, Captain,” Coulson explained as he fell in line with the two agents. “They weren’t even supposed to know we were there.”

He held the door to Fury’s office open and let the agents in ahead of himself.

“You guys really screwed the pooch last night,” Fury growled as soon as the door was closed behind them. Steve looked to Clint with a confused and somewhat disgusted expression, but there was no time to ask for clarification before Fury continued. “Please tell me some way - _any way_ \- that I can look at this as anything but a total pooch-screw?”

“Total is a strong word,” Steve tried to say, and Clint quickly agreed, “There are degrees of totality, sir.”

“Here’s what we got,” Coulson cut in, handing Fury a slim file with Raza’s photo clipped to the top. “He’s the leader of the Ten Rings. Last night we were able to get into his financial records, and if you look you’ll see hundreds of millions transferred through the Commerce Bank.”

“As you know, sir, the Commerce Bank has been a front for terrorist activities in the past,” said Steve, continuing Coulson’s train of thought. “We can’t ignore the possibility that this is connected to the MIRV warheads that were smuggled out of Kazakhstan earlier this month.”

“So far this isn’t blowing my skirt up, gentlemen,” Fury muttered. “Is there anything remotely substantial tying this to operations in the United States? Do you have any hard data?”

Steve cleared his throat and carefully said, “Not what you’d call rock hard.”

“Then perhaps you better get some before someone parks a car in front of the White House with a nuclear weapon in the trunk!” Fury roared. “Dismissed - and don’t any of you come back until you’ve pinned down the money or the missiles, am I understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Coulson answered and calmly shepherded his team out, leading them straight back to his own office.

“Speaking of rock hard,” Clint wondered as they wove their way through the aisles in Coulson’s wake. “Steve, what was the name of that hottie you danced with?”

“Léonide Lorraine,” Steve answered without much effort. Coulson stepped into his office first and held the door for them to follow. “Coulson said she’d been in the Army, right?”

Clint helped himself to Coulson’s own copy of the report and started to flip through the papers. “Yeah—wasn’t she on the disbursement ledger?”

Coulson watched him with interest and Steve walked around the desk to read over his shoulder.

“I was right, check this out: two million to Private Lorraine.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Steve said. “She buys antiquities for Raza.”

“He’s got a separate art purchasing ledger, my man,” Clint flipped through to show Steve what he was talking about. “Looks like you were getting freaky with a criminal, Cap.”

“There was nothing _freaky—_ ”

“You’re right, Barton,” Coulson interrupted their bickering again. “This is above market rate, even for her.”

“Alright, let’s get a workup on her.” Steve agreed. “Do we know where she is?”

“Right here in the capital,” Clint smirked, handing Steve the file with her preliminary details listed. “She lives in Rome, but she works with the Smithsonian and diplomatic offices in the Middle East. A talented linguist, you might say.”

“Don’t be crass, Barton,” Coulson admonished absently, and Steve gave him a half-hearted punch to boot. “You ready to get back in the field, Captain?”

“Yeah, this sounds like a mission for Special Agent Twinkle Toes,” Clint chimed in, and this time Steve’s fist found its mark.

***

“Told you there was something freaky about that braud!” Clint hollered in greeting when Steve met up with the team in the luxury suite they had commandeered as part of the cover. “She’s been selling all sorts of shit everywhere—I’m talking like, all the ‘stans. How big was Persia, anyway, today-Russia?”

Steve hung up his jacket and was half-way through undoing his tie when Clint shoved a file into his hands. “Read it,” he said around the dum dum in his mouth. “Seriously man, she’s covered so much ground she could give Tasha a run for her money.”

“All in the Middle East?” asked Steve, and Clint started to answer when Coulson’s voice interrupted instead.

“Were you followed?” Coulson asked from across the room, buttoning up his shirt on his way out of one of the bedrooms. Steve shook his head as he skimmed the file Clint had given him.

“Oh yeah, the phones have been going crazy,” Clint said by way of explanation, plucking the dum dum out of his mouth to gesture at the row of carrier phones. “Might as well be a telethon for the deaf, she seems to have a lot of interest in Steve Grant’s ass-etts.”

“That’s enough, thanks,” said Steve and snatched the dum dum out of Clint’s hand to chuck into the bin by the desk across the room.

“Could you be any more juvenile?” Clint sniffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Legitimate question: could you? I had to visit the dentist for that.”

“Hey,” Phil raised his voice to get their attention. “How did the meeting go?”

“Judging by the warehouse she showed me, I don’t think there’s a limit to the size of the import or the number of people she could be receiving. I heard a lot of Kurdish, but that was all I could place. Maybe Lebanese dialects?”

“Think they could have connections to the Ten Rings?” Clint asked him, then shrugged when Steve looked his way. “Just a thought - did any of them look familiar?”

Steve frowned in thought for a moment but then shook his head. “Not that I could see, but I’ll go through the footage again. Did the pin stream well?”

“The shades received live footage fine,” Clint shrugged. “Don’t know how well it recorded yet, we can go through that file first.”

“You do that, and see about setting up more surveillance on her,” Coulson agreed. “I have to go check in with Natasha at six—Clint, any words?”

“Ask her how the blue fruit’s hanging,” Clint smirked. “She’ll know.”

Coulson stared at him with a tired expression, and then he left without a word.

“Do I want to know?” Steve asked.

“Doubt it,” Clint answered with a pleasant smile and tossed Steve the remote to pull up surveillance footage from earlier. “You set it up and I’ll get the snacks—this is going to be a longass—hm,” he paused on his way to the kitchen. “Do you hear that?”

“Shit, that’s Tony,” Steve grabbed for his discarded jacket and dug out his cell. “Hey! Hi Tony, what’s going on?”

Tony hesitated on the other end. “Is it a bad time?”

“Meeting, that’s all,” answered Steve easily, frowning a little at the neon-green margherita Clint pressed into his hand. “What’s—what’s going on?”

“I just—we said seven tonight, does that still work for you?”

Steve spared a glance at his watch and smiled at the thought, “Of course, I’ll be there. Trust me.”

“I do,” Tony answered on rote. “Then we’ll meet back home at seven, go from there?”

Across the room, one of SHIELD issue phones on the coffee table started ringing a generic tune. “Lorraine,” Clint mouthed around the straw of his drink.

“Seven back at home, got it,” Steve hurried to say, pinning his cell between his shoulder and ear to catch the phone Clint tossed at him. “Listen sweetheart, I have to go, alright? I’ll see you soon—bye,” and in quick succession he put away his drink, hung up his own phone, and answered the ringing cell. “Léonide, what a pleasure.”

Clint raised an eyebrow and sucked on his drink leisurely, finishing it as Steve hung up on the second call. “You’re such a disaster, I don’t know how you’re doing this sober.”

“Don’t really have a choice,” Steve shrugged. “She says she’s got something to show me.”

Clint snorted at the obvious come-on. “Yeah, I bet she does.”

“Twenty minutes,” Steve continued and quickly pulled his jacket back on, “I’ll go see what she’s got, then go home straight from there.”

“Coulson left your ring on top of the TV,” Clint pointed out. “Don’t forget the room key, either. You might need it if he kicks you out.”

“How about you mind your own business and suit up? You’re my back-up.”

***

A doorman stood in wait when Steve arrived at Lorraine’s offices twenty minutes later, and he led him silently down to the warehouse Léonide had showed him to earlier in the day. He took a moment to wordlessly point Steve toward the back of the warehouse before stepping back out to the hallway to leave him alone in the dark, silent maw of ancient ruins.

A handful of faint lanterns were left around the warehouse workspaces, casting wavering shadows across the faint outlines of tables and statues. Steve glanced down at his watch as he fixed his cuffs and strolled down the aisle in the direction the doorman had pointed. Closer to the other side of the warehouse he finally made out the towering facade of an ancient tomb, a single live candle lighting it up from within. A shadow moved across the wall in the entryway.

“Hello?” Steve called and stepped into the tomb, his voice instinctively lowered.

“Hello, Steve,” Léonide answered softly, and Steve whipped around, startled, to find her emerging from a shadowed alcove. “Do you like my tomb? The museum financing fell through, I thought perhaps your clients might be interested.”

“Well,” Steve started to say, and quickly found he had to clear his throat. “It’s certainly ...dramatic.”

“Especially in this light,” Léonide agreed. “This is the only light they had then, did you know? So I prefer to study it this way. I love this place; I love all ruins.”

Steve smiled, glancing down at the sarcophagus with its intricate carved designs with an appreciative eye. “Is that why you got into this business?”

“I have always been a collector at heart,” she admitted. She turned to him in the flickering half-light, resting her hand gently over his forearm. “When I see something I want, I have to have it.”

“And you have a reputation as someone who gets what she wants.”

“I do,” she whispered.

“Steve,” Clint sing-songed into his earpiece from his venue of last refuge in the parking lot. “Steve, this is your conscience speaking...”

Léonide smiled up at him then, close enough that her lips brushed his, but instead of pressing closer she stepped back and reached for the oil lamp perched on the sarcophagus. “Look at this,” she said and held up the lamp to bring the bas-relief figures to life. Steve watched silently, mesmerized, as the stone faces shifted and changed in the shadows, their stone eyes gazing across the room. “This is the legacy of people who died twenty centuries ago.”

“They breathed and loved and wept, just like us. And now their ideals, their religions, their social orders… are all gone. What did any of it matter?” she asked him at last, and came back to Steve. “I only hope they lived well. That they got what they wanted.”

She brushed a hand up across his chest, and Steve gently took it in his own. He regarded her hand for a moment, smoothing his thumb across her knuckles. “Getting what you want is important to you?”

“It is the only important thing,” she whispered, a purr of satisfaction, and pressed in closer to kiss him very lightly, a delicate, sensual invitation.

“Steve?” Clint frowned, half-certain he knew what the silence meant. “Hey big guy, listen to the following codeword: Tony. T-O-N-Y. Do you need me to call?”

Steve groaned softly under his breath and pulled away to break the kiss. “Yes,” he whispered, a soft word to chase her lips.

Léonide draped her arms around his neck, pulling herself closer against him. “Yes what?”

“Yes, it is important,” he confessed in undertone, and when his phone rang in his breast pocket it startled him enough to shake her off. “I—sorry,” he stammered, making a show of glancing at the screen and quickly retreating. “It looks like I have to run—how about I call you tomorrow? Your proposal is - it is very interesting.”

He marched out through the warehouse and found his own way out of the building at the least suspicious speed he could manage, and minutes later he threw himself into the passenger seat of the unmarked sedan.

“Not sure that’s your shade,” Clint commented innocently. “Maybe a blush?”

Steve groaned and all but tore the sun visor down to inspect this face in the little mirror. “Shut up and drive, I gotta get home.”

“Well yeah, duh,” Clint scoffed, navigating the car back into traffic with ease. “Even you can’t be absent for two birthdays in a row.”

Beside him, Steve stopped scrubbing at his face with a wet wipe and stared at Clint in sudden horror.

Clint raised his eyebrows at him, and eventually he asked. “So… it wasn’t birthday nookie that delayed you this morning, was it?”

“I wasn’t—Christ,” he swore and dropped his head in his hands. “Damnit—what time is it?”

“Ten past,” Clint answered quickly, for once sincere. “Hey, ten minutes isn’t a big deal; this is D.C., ten minutes is just traffic—I’ll get you...” he trailed off silently then, drawing Steve’s attention back to the present.

“What?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Of course I won’t,” Steve sighed. “Tell me we’re low on gas.”

“Nah,” Clint answered in a casual tone. “We have a friend. Five cars back, inside lane.”

Steve groaned in frustration and manipulated his side-view mirror to get a good look at them. “Station wagon?”

“Yeah, they were across Lorraine’s office earlier,” said Clint, then he turned to Steve and asked, somewhat regretfully, “Want me to lose them?”

“No,” Steve said in a pained voice. “No, we need this lead.”

“We’re going to need back-up,” Clint advised, but Steve was already on his phone to Coulson. “Tell them we’ll be at the Georgetown Mall in three minutes.”

“Copy that,” Steve relayed back from Coulson before tossing the phone away, and turned his attention back to the car tailing them in an effort to ignore the nagging guilt. “To hell with terrorists. They’re so inconsiderate.”

“There’s three of them in the car,” Clint reported as they pulled up to the curb.

“I got it,” Steve muttered as he unpinned his camera pin and attached it to the back of his suit collar instead. “Glasses,” he warned and plucked them off Clint’s face and put them on before climbing out of the car.

“Hey, Steve,” Clint’s voice said through the earpiece only some minutes later. “There’s another guy here, still in the car.”

“I figured,” Steve muttered, counting the two overgrown men stalking him through the crowd. “Stay on him.”

Clint hummed in understanding even as he reached for his phone, sparing a moment to mute his comms before dialing. “Tony? Hey, it’s Clint. You're not going to believe this, but Steve remembered he left something at the office. He wanted me to tell you he was running a little late,” he forced a laugh, then added, “You know Steve, he can be so forgetful sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed with a tight smile and hung up. “I know Steve.”

“He is so screwed,” Clint muttered down at his phone, but then threw it across to the passenger seat to check on the third goon again through the rearview mirror.

Half a block down, the station wagon now stood empty.

“God _damnit._ ”

***

Steve calmly made his way through the open promenade of the mall, one eye on the surroundings around him and the other on the two muscle-men stalking him. He wove his way through the main concourse of the mall, until he finally spotted a sign for the restroom and turned down a narrower walkway between some shops. Predictably, the men soon followed him in.

“Steve,” Clint called over the comms. “I lost the third guy. You copy?”

There was little Steve could do with company, so instead he whistled tunelessly at the urinal, communicating _Follow_ in morse code. Through the camera pin and the streaming lens in his glasses he followed one guy passed him by to head for the stalls while the other stopped at one of the sinks, combing his hair in the mirror.

Two men to one super-soldier; maybe he would make it home in a forgivable time after all.

***

Two blocks away, Clint jogged through the crowds and circled back to the mall as he tried to catch sight of the third suspect. “Steve! I’ve lost him, I don’t—”

The man who had ghosted out of the car right under his nose came stumbled out through the doors and the evening crowds not ten yards away from him, wheeling around to aim a weapon at something that was clearly following him.

It only took Clint a moment to identify Raza.

Clint drew his weapon at once and bellowed a command to _Freeze_ across the crowd. People scattered in every direction and there wasn’t a clean shot, but of the two of them only Clint seemed to care. Raza turned on him with his own weapon, unloading the semi-automatic Beretta with no concern for the frantic crowds in the way, forcing Clint to duck behind a flagpole for cover.

Like a vindictive Christmas ornament, Steve hurtled through the shop store window in a flurry of glass shards and fairy lights, his own gun raised and aimed at Raza. But he hesitated, too, unwilling to fire into the crowd, a fact Raza took immediate advantage of and sprinted away, back into the mall.

“Get to the car!” Steve yelled in Clint’s direction, tearing after the man on foot through the mall and out onto the street of traffic on the other side, where he emerged just in time to see Raza knock a motorcyclist off-balance and ride off on the nimble little Kawasaki. Growling with frustration, Steve tracked Raza’s trajectory and pounding off in pursuit through the park, cutting through for a shortcut.

“Captain,” Coulson called over the comms not minutes later. “Unit seven on sight. What’s your twenty?”

“Hold, please,” Steve answered breathlessly as he spotted a mounted police officer and sprinted directly at him.

“Federal officer in pursuit of suspect!” With one hand on the reins and the other on the cop, Steve tore the mounted officer out of his saddle and leapt up in his place, throwing an apology over his shoulder as he turned the horse around and charged after Raza in a full gallop.

“Westbound in the park in pursuit,” said Steve when he finally returned to Coulson. “Suspect is on motorcycle about to come out on Franklin. Hang on—” he swung the horse to a sharp left, forcing the it to take a running leap over a park bench to cut a diagonal across the park. “I want you on 14th in case he turns south. Hawkeye, get on the north side to box him in.”

“Copy that,” Coulson responded immediately.

“And make it fast,” Steve added. “My horse is getting tired.”

“Did he say—”

“Copy that!” Coulson snapped. “Hawkeye, north on Franklin.”

Raza turned a hard left, weaving out of the park and directly into oncoming traffic, barreling up onto the sidewalk and scattering pedestrians. Before he got a block down the road, Coulson turned his car around the corner in a blare of horns and screeching tires, cranking the wheel to slide the car up broadside, blocking both the pedestrian and oncoming lane. Raza locked up the brakes and ground it to a halt, then popped the clutch to wheel the bike around, jumping the single step up and driving straight into the Marriott.

On either side, bellmen and guests dove for cover as the bike roared past, the galloping horse tearing through only seconds behind. Across marble and red velvet carpets, through the lobby and the lounge, and as they charged through the restaurant it was all Steve could do to gather the animal and force a massive jump over the live jazz quartet diving for cover.

They burst out of the maze into a second grand hall, and ahead of him Steve saw Raza skidding across the marble towards one of the glass-case elevators. He cantered his horse to the second elevator, ducking to avoid the frame as they squeezed in beside a well-dressed elderly couple, the horse clomping dangerous close to their feet in the tight squeeze.

“Top floor, please,” Steve asked them, turning in the saddle to track Raza’s own journey. “Keep your finger on the emergency stop button and when I tell you, push it.”

But Raza never tried to elude him by stopping at random, and floor after floor they climbed, and somewhere in the seconds before he urged the horse backwards out of the elevator the thought struck him that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t make it home in a forgivable time after all.

***

By the time Coulson had caught up with them, SHIELD medics were packing Steve away into the ambulance and Clint was trying to run interference over the phone. Coulson flagged him down and once he had his attention, asked, “How’s he looking?”

“Well, the doctors still can’t cure stupid, but he’s stable,” Clint answered quick enough. “The serum is doing its thing.”

There was a huff of indignation from the gurney, but far from the expected glares of outrage or verbal protests, Steve’s pale face turned an impressive shade of red.

“I told you blush was more your color,” Clint commented and patted him on the shoulder, drawing a pained grunt from the laid-up captain.

Coulson climbed up into the ambulance beside Clint, settling in for the ride back. “What did you tell Tony?”

“Yeah, right, cause I’m making that call,” Clint snorted. “It’s your turn, Boss, I already made the _he left something in the office_ call.”

“You have more experience making the calls,” Coulson countered. “You can spin it better.”

“And you think that qualifies me to tell Tony that his paper-pushing, artifact-dusting husband can’t come home tonight due to injuries he sustained in a head-on collision with a penthouse window at the Marriott when his horse refused to pursue an assassin off the rooftop?”

Steve groaned in his gurney, the burn of shame beginning to far outweigh his physical injuries.

“That was perhaps the dumbest thing I have ever witnessed,” Coulson informed him. “And I’ve worked with Barton for ten years.”

“Who asked you?” Clint scowled at him, then turned back to Steve. “Don’t listen to him. Steve, real talk: that was the coolest shit ever!” he crowed. “Can you imagine how awesome that’d been if it had worked? A _horse!_ Captain America hunting down terrorists from one high rise to the next _on a horse!”_

“A little louder, Barton. I don’t think the evening news in Virginia heard you.”

A familiar ringtone filled the ambulance for the second time in the past hour, and Steve groaned. “Don’t,” he mumbled around the bruises cracked across his jaw.

“Yeah, I’d want to hide, too, big guy,” Clint sighed and patted him on the shoulder again, and this time Steve managed not to cry out.

***

Hours later, when the serum had done its work and Steve could get away from medical, he came home to find Tony asleep in a chair at the dining room table next to a half-eaten cake and some melted ice cream. A novelty poncho, stitched up in red and gold, lay tidily folded next to the unused plate and some torn wrapping paper Steve recognized from the present Coulson had given him the night before.

He braced himself and quietly came around the dining room to give Tony’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. Tony stirred at once, startled by the touch until he looked up to see who it was. “Oh. It’s you.”

“Look, I know you’re upset,” Steve said sheepishly, and he struggled a little to get down on one knee beside him. “I’m really sorry, sweetheart. I raced home as quick as I could—”

“It’s okay, Steve. Don’t bother,” Tony said and got up, expressing no energy or interest in hearing any more apologies. He shuffled up the stairs without a look back. “Thanks for the poncho.”

“I,” Steve started to say, stopped, then tried again. “Happy birthday, Tony.”

Tony paused on the stairs in silence for a moment, then with a sigh he said, “Yeah. Thanks.”

***

“I understand that the finer points of a covert operation escape you and your team, Coulson,” Fury growled as he towered over the three men seated at the conference table in his office. “Blow up a castle in Europe, I let it slide. But what the hell is this bullshit?”

He slapped a newspaper down on the table between them, and the main headline read, _Wild West Chase_. Coulson’s expression didn’t waver, and Steve looked downright murderous; Clint was the only one with the presence of mind to wince.

Fury looked from one silent man to the next, a scowl etched almost permanently on his face. “Now would be the time to tell me you got something, gentlemen.”

“We know now that Lorraine and Raza are connected,” Coulson offered. “The intel and surveillance we pulled on her has connected them both to a man called the ‘Sand Spider’.”

“And why the hell would they call him that?”

Clint shrugged. “Probably because it sounds scary.”

“We suspect the Sand Spider is one of Raza’s suppliers, if not an unknown officer of higher rank in the Ten Rings.”

“This is impressive, gentlemen,” Fury drawled, “of course, it would have been even more impressive if you _actually knew where he was. ”_

“We’ll get him.” Steve bit out.

“Yes, you will,” Fury agreed, the unspoken _you damn well better_ understood by all. “I still want this team on the case. And Captain? Now that your cover is blown and all, how about you actually try to keep a low profile?”

Steve glared at the man like he was a breath from taking his frustrations out on the Colonel, when Coulson smoothly intervened. “We’ll show ourselves out,” Coulson suggested calmly, taking Steve by the arm and leading him out, trusting that Clint would follow.

Once the office door shut behind them, Coulson turned to Clint and held up the car keys. “Take him home, he’s done for the day.”

Steve snatched the keys out of Coulson’s hand and turned without a word in the direction of the garage.

“Thanks for that, Boss,” Clint groused and hurried after Steve. Steve didn’t say a word and neither did Clint, leaving the man to stew in peace. He hadn’t even said anything when Steve clearly navigated the car the wrong way, committed to sticking with his partner whatever he needed. Typically, that would involve lounging somewhere on the National Mall eating Korean BBQ tacos and watching Steve sprint by for several hours; all in all, a sacrifice he was willing to make for his country.

But when Steve pulled the car into park, they were nowhere near the typical jogging trail.

“What’s going on?” Clint asked and peered out the window. “Is this Stane, Inc.?”

Steve climbed out and walked around to Clint’s side, leaning into the car door a little anxiously. “Look, uh, Tony wasn’t too happy last night.”

“No shit.”

Steve shut his mouth to keep from snapping back, and after a moment of silence said, “I’m just going to run in and see if he can’t away for lunch, alright?”

Clint nodded. “You want me to just hang here?”

“Yeah, just hang here for a minute,” Steve agreed and pushed away from the car. “I’ll let you know either way.”

“Alright, I'll just hang here then!”

With a quick glance across the street, Steve jogged across to the imposing office building where Tony worked, a veritable mountain of steel and glass. He breezed past the ground floor receptionist under the pretense of a birthday surprise and rode the elevator all the way up to the thirty-first floor.

There he had to pause to orient himself, thrown by the library like maze of cubicles that stood between him and his husband’s office, and he picked his way carefully through the illogical twists and turns.

“Tony!” Steve heard someone call not ten yards ahead, and without thinking he pressed himself against a wall to stay out of sight. “Tony, it’s your mystery man on line three!”

Even from halfway across the room Steve could see how his husband perked up and hurried to shut his office door to take the call. Steve stared at the closed door in silence, powerless to move. The conversation doesn’t take two minutes, but from where he was standing, it lasted an eternity.

And still it wasn’t long enough.

Tony slipped out of his office, flushed with excitement even as he struggled into his jacket. “Hey Lang, can you cover me for an hour?”

Scott wheeled his chair over to the door and popped his head out the next-door office, scoffing at the suggestion. “Just an hour? You should tell that stud to take more time.”

“Would you shut up?” Tony accused, but clearly not with enough fire to stop himself grinning. “I should never have told you about him.”

“It was inevitable,” Scott reasoned wisely. “I got eyes and ears everywhere.”

“Then put them to use and keep Rushman off my ass for the next hour,” said Tony and patted himself down to check for his wallet and keys before hurrying off.

“If you’re back in less than two hours, I’ll broadcast it to the whole tower!” Scott warned before wheeling back into his office, leaving the office door open.

Tony all but ran down the hall to the elevators, past a dumbfounded Steve who looked about as happy to be alive as when he collided with the Marriott suite windows the night before. Minutes passed before he could get himself into gear again, and eventually Steve made it down to the ground floor, dragging his feet back in the general direction of the unmarked SUV in a daze. When he stopped, unseeing, in the middle of the road, Clint scrambled out of the car to grab him and lead him across out of the way of oncoming traffic.

“What the hell—Cap, what’s up? What’s going on?” he asked as he helped Steve sit in the backseat. “Hey, can you look at me, big guy?”

Steve went willingly into the car, dropping down into the support like a grateful sack of bricks. “Ton—Tony,” he stammered, struggling to get the words out. “It’s Tony.”

“Alright,” Clint drawled, waiting in vain for more information. “Okay, throw me a bone here. It’s something about Tony...”

“He’s,” Steve tried again, breathless all of a sudden. “He’s having an affair.”

“Hey!” Clint grinned, clapping Steve on the shoulder. “Congratulations, man! Welcome to the club!”

“But, it’s _Tony_. He wouldn’t,” Steve urged him to understand.

“Yeah, it’s okay; it’s only your first.” Clint nodded sagely, leaning against the door now to watch Steve with a sympathetic expression. “Nobody believes it can happen to them the first time.”

“It can’t be,” Steve said adamantly with a pitiful frown. “He’s—he’s too blunt to lie.”

“Relax, Steve, Tony still loves you,” Clint soothed. “He just wants someone to bang him six ways to Sunday, it’s no big. You’ll get used—”

Steve rose to his feet and wheeled around on Clint, slamming him against the car. “Not another _word._ ”

But Steve’s rage and frustration only earned a wry expression from Clint, who finally attempted a shrug. “What did you expect, Steve? He’s flesh and blood, and you’re never there. It was a matter of time.”

The truth in Clint’s words knocked the fight right out of him, and Steve sagged back into the backseat where Clint had first deposited him. Clint gently pushed him further into the car and pulled his legs fully into the car before shutting the door. “What do you say we have a change of plans? Let’s get back to work—that’s how I like to get through my life when it turns to dogshit. Catch some fascists you can beat the shit out of or something—you always feel better then, right?”

Steve didn’t say anything, so Clint got behind the wheel and pulled the car back into traffic.

“Clint?” Steve asked a few moments later.

“Yeah?”

“Follow him.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crumb cakes - thank you all for such a positive reception! I'm kinda speechless. Big big hugs to you all! I hope you enjoy this bit, too =D
> 
> PS. If ever I wanted to add warning tags for a real asshole of a character, this would be it. Enjoy meeting Ty =)

“I’m telling you, Tasha, he went all _Death of a Salesman_ on me," Clint said as he trudged up the stairs to Steve and Tony’s house later that afternoon, letting them in with his own key. “Vacant sky-blue doll eyes; I’m gonna have nightmares.”

Natasha articulated skepticism with the arch of a brow and followed him into the house. She frowned at the distant hum and sniffed the air. “Is that a vacuum?”

Clint ignored the noise and honed in on the only signal of value: smell. “Meatballs!”

“Out of the kitchen!” Steve yelled from another end of the house, and he came around the corner in nothing but slippers and jeans, the vacuum pulled along behind him with one hand and a recliner braced against his shoulder with the other. “If you throw off the temperature, you’re dead, Barton.”

Clint scoffed and attacked the fridge instead, digging out a beer for himself and Nat. “That’s unnecessary man, did the vacuum eat your shirt or something?”

“Are you nesting?” Nat deadpanned, and without looking clicked her bottle against Clint’s in thanks.

Steve rolled his eyes and wandered back out to the sitting room, and the other two agents followed without invitation. “I had the day off, thought I’d remodel.”

“Is that sketch new?” Clint asked and gestured with his bottle across the room. “I like it, the charcoal works with the gold and scarlet. It pops.”

“Yeah, so did the wall behind it,” Steve said with a wry twist of the lips.

“You didn’t,” Natasha said with as little humor as she could manage, but sure enough when Clint picked off the framed sketch there was a deep wound in the wall. “Dammit, Steve.”

“Don’t _dammit, Steve_ me,” he warned her and finally put the recliner down in a corner where he wanted it, angling it away from direct summer sun. “He was the one thing in my life that—” he ground his teeth and immediately released a protesting cushion, taking a few steps away from the furniture before he caused irreparable damage. “He _is_ the one thing in my life, Nat.”

Clint dropped into a chaise lounge in the corner, kicking his feet up and sprawling luxuriously. “The _one thing?_ What about truth, justice, and the American way?”

“Look, I’m not here to play camp counselor,” Nat said with tempered impatience, and she held up a new phone for Steve. “Fury gave your team a blank check on wiretaps, Coulson’s got Lorraine’s office done up. The phone will have access to every recording and the analyses as they come in.”

Steve eyed the phone and then took in her expression more carefully as he accepted it. “Blank check on wiretaps?”

“No,” Clint said immediately, but Nat nodded.

“His office?”

“Everywhere,” Steve corrected without hesitation, hands fisted at his sides as he struggled to keep calm. “I want to know who this man is, what he does, and where he does it.”

“That’s insane—Steve,” Clint quickly got to his feet. “Cap, that’s so illegal—”

Steve grabbed him by the front of his shirt and jerked him dangerously close. “Don’t give me that crap, we do it twenty times a day.” He released Barton and turned back to Nat. “Get me the taps.”

“I’m on it,” she promised and stepped back. “I’ll let myself out.”

Clint watched her leave down the hall and turned back to Steve, clearly torn about what to do. “Steve, holster your jealousy for two minutes and reconsider? This is going to backfire bigtime.”

Before Steve could respond, Natasha came striding back through to the living room in a rush. “Tony’s here: backdoor, Clint, now.”

“If I had a nickle for every— _ow!_ ” he hissed and obligingly followed Tasha as she dragged him out to the back garden by his ear. Steve locked up behind them just as he heard the front door open.

“Honey, I’m home,” Steve heard Tony sing-song in a falsetto as he let himself in, but then no other sounds came to indicate Tony moved farther into their home. Eventually, Tony took another step to let the door fall closed behind him and cautiously called, “...Steve?”

Steve let go of the breath he’d been holding and padded silently out to the front hall. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No,” Tony said absently, eyes roving over Steve. “Did something happen? What are you doing home before sundown?”

“I was invited to go home early,” Steve admitted with a minor shrug, spreading his arms to gesture further into the house. “I may have puttered. There may be dinner.”

“There _may_ be dinner?” Tony frowned. “There’s nothing conditional about that smell, Steve, those are your family recipe meatballs.”

Steve glanced down at his slippers before he met Tony’s eyes again. “I thought you might want to go out,” he admitted sheepishly, “something nicer for your birthday, maybe?”

Silence hung between them as Tony stared in disbelief. “Something nicer for my birthday?”

“You like Bourbon Steak, and we haven’t been there a while,” Steve started, but Tony laughed him off before he could finish the suggestion, finally kicking his shoes away and walking past Steve into the house.

“And I assume you’ve been sitting on these reservations for months now?” Tony scoffed, digging through his pockets and tossing everything up on the table by the door with his back still turned.

“Maybe I have,” Steve challenged in a forcefully calm voice. “If that’s what you want, they will have a table for us.”

With a sigh, Tony turned to him and admitted, “I’m tired, Steve. It’s been a long week. I need a drink, some peace and quiet, and,” he added with a slight grimace, “I need you to put a shirt on or something.”

Steve blinked at him, glanced down at himself as if he might find something unusual there, then had to ask, “Why?”

“Because I can’t stay mad at you when you look like that,” Tony growled as he walked off.

“Then no!” Steve called after him, a small, hopeful smile daring to tug at his expression. He hurried after Tony and caught up with him in the sitting room, standing as close to Tony’s turned back as he dared and innocently asked, “Is there a direct correlation between how mad you are and how much I am wearing?”

Tony groaned and he scrunched his face up against the chuckle that threatened to bubble out of him, and without turning to look at Steve he reached back to blindly smack him for the cheesy attempt at humor. “You don’t get to be funny, or charming, or,” he stammered to a brief silence when wordlessly, one after another, Steve’s slippers were kicked up in front of Tony’s feet, “-or more undressed! What are you doing?”

From behind him answered the distinctive sound of a zipper slowly lowered, shuffling denim, and in the end Tony helplessly looked on as a pair of well-worn jeans were also kicked up to lie beside the slippers. “No,” he all but whined, then, with feeling, swore. “ _Cheater_.”

“Guilty,” admitted Steve quietly, and took a careful stepped closer, standing close enough that Tony could feel his breath against the nape of his neck; close enough that, had Tony allowed it, Steve could have bowed his head and gently pressed his forehead to Tony’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Tony,” he whispered after a brief silence. “I am sorry I wasn’t here for your birthday. I am sorry I wasn’t here to ask about your long week. Would you tell me about it now?”

“I’m not ready to forgive you yet,” Tony cautioned him.

“This isn’t about me, Tony.”

“In that case,” Tony sighed and reached behind him to take Steve’s hand, silently asking him to follow him to the chaise. “Sit down and spread ‘em.”

Steve hurried to comply, arranging himself on the sofa with his thighs spread wide enough for Tony to sit between. Standing between his knees, Tony sucked in a deep breath through his teeth and drank in the sight of him. “Seven years, Steve.”

At a loss for words, Steve held out his hand, beckoning Tony closer until he deigned to kneel his way across the sofa and settled in beside him on the expansive seat. Once Tony stopped shifting and found a comfortable position with his back against Steve’s chest, Steve pressed a tender kiss to his temple and rested his head against Tony’s. “How was your day?” he asked quietly, mindful of how close they were.

“The quarterly board meeting was this Tuesday,” Tony said in a distant voice. As he talked, Steve gently took Tony’s left hand by the wrist, anchoring it in one hand and rubbing down each finger with the other, giving each finger a firm pull. Tony’s thumb gave an audible pop, and Tony stifled a hiss of relief even as he asked, “What are you doing?”

“Is it uncomfortable?” He turned Tony’s hand palm up and cradled it in both his hands, drawing firm and fast lines from the center of his hand out toward each finger.

“No,” admitted Tony quietly, engrossed in the repetitive movement of Steve’s thumbs across his palm. “Just sore.”

“You’ll feel better soon,” Steve promised, finishing with his thumb and wrapping his hands around Tony’s wrist and hand again to give it another slow, firm pull before starting on a second round. “What happened at the board meeting on Tuesday?”

“I didn’t go.”

Steve hummed quietly in the silence that followed Tony’s admission, beckoning him to continue. Eventually, he did. “It’s been almost two years since anything I presented was accepted. Two years. I could have gone anywhere after MIT, I - _why_ did Stane hire me if they don't want what I do? I just wish,” Tony hesitated in his sudden vehemence, then cleared his throat and with feigned nonchalance tried to shrug it off. “So, whatever. I didn’t go.”

Steve turned his attention down to Tony’s wrist, rolling the smaller bones of the joint between his thumbs and forefingers, drawing clicking pops as he went. “But...”

“I sent Rushman the ideas I would have shared with the board, to get their feedback. Four of them, Steve,” Tony clarified with sudden feeling. “She said every fucking one of them was turned down in the same day. That makes twelve this month.”

Behind him, Steve frowned with a dark sympathy, and he silently continued working his way through Tony’s tight forearm as he collected his thoughts. “Sweetheart, you know we have enough saved up to be comfortable if you would like to find a different job,” he reminded Tony finally. “A man like you could work anywhere he wants to, and that should be wherever makes you happy.”

“What I'm hearing is that you no longer need a sugar daddy,” Tony began, but behind him Steve laughed so unexpectedly that his sarcastic monologue was foiled. “This isn't a laughing matter, Steven! Who will keep you in the lap of luxury on just a quarter of our income?”

Steve smothered another wave of laughter and nuzzled at the soft skin behind Tony’s ear. “You will, dummy,” he whispered with a broad, adoring smile. “We have several months saved up thanks to you, and the signing bonuses any company worth their salt will offer you could be enough to sponsor a second honeymoon.”

“I suppose,” Tony conceded reluctantly, but his attention had perked up and the cogs of his mind were so obviously turning with increasing force that Steve just leaned back to watch him and waited for him to spill the beans.

It didn't take long.

“Do you think that's what we need?” Tony asked quietly, his words pitched low as if to obscure their vulnerability.

“I think,” Steve answered slowly, choosing his words with a care for variables that Tony could not be allowed to imagine. “I think we need to do something, Tony. I don't know if a vacation is it,” he admitted, “but then, I don't think it would hurt either.”

“Where should we go?” Tony pressed on, finally turning his head a little to catch more of Steve’s expression in his periphery. Steve brought his left hand up to kiss his ring finger, then turned it over to kiss his palm, too, before gently releasing it.

“Give me your other hand,” Steve said a little absently, and he pressed a kiss to the fingertips of his right hand before working through the same routine. “We should go… Somewhere colder,” he eventually settled on. “You always burn here in the summer.”

“How about the alps? Italian or Swiss; I'm not picky.”

“Counter offer: How about dinner first,” Steve answered with a poorly stifled laugh, “tell me more about your week, and then we can think about where we want to go.”

“It isn't fair, you know,” Tony grumbled halfheartedly, twisting his body a little further down in the seat to be able to look up at Steve’s face. “How come you get sexier when you're devious? There should be, like, an upper limit, or a quota, or something.”

Steve made no attempt to silence his laughter this time, efficiently working the stubborn knots out of Tony’s arm in firm strokes from his elbow to his wrist. “That's your hunger speaking, babe.”

“What are we having?”

“Chard and broccoli salad,” Steve said, dutifully talking right over Tony’s loud and explicit protests against broccoli, “scalloped potatoes and meatballs. In that order.”

“I drink my greens every morning. Isn't that indignity enough?”

“Of course it’s enough, Tony, but it's enough for the morning,” Steve explained again, as he often did. Then, to appease him, Steve added, “You might like this better; I mean, I couldn't believe they had them already in May, but I found mangos for dessert.”

Tony frowned as if Steve had singlehandedly cancelled the weekend. “ _Fruit?_ ”

“Mangos for dessert,” Steve clarified with the same patience, and as he finished with Tony’s right hand he brought it to his lips to press a kiss to the back of his knuckles, similar to his affection for the left hand. Then he turned Tony’s hand over and he closed his lips around the tips of Tony’s first two fingers, lapping his tongue around them once before pulling off with a wet, lazy scrape of his teeth. “Dessert for me.”

***

In the hours when night faded into the first inception of morning, an insistent series of vibrations eventually alerted Steve to the conscious world. At first he only lifted his head from Tony’s warm abdomen to confirm that what he had heard was not part of some dream, then, convinced, he grudgingly untangled his arms from around Tony’s middle and shoved himself off the mattress to grope for his phone.

There were four new texts from Barton crowding his screen, each an increasingly creative iteration of the original message, which had simply stated:

_Lunch plans? T said the douchenozzle’s all in._

A hand landed on his hip and stole his attention away from carefully re-reading the subsequent messages. Tony hummed drowsily in question, then after a period of silence mumbled, “Steve?”

Steve dropped the phone on the nightstand and crawled back under the covers, wrapping his arms around Tony’s warm body and resting his head on Tony’s chest. Tony shifted momentarily under Steve’s bulk and soon found a comfortable position again, his right arm draped over Steve’s shoulders.

“You’re awake,” Tony accused after a few minutes of stilted silence, his words slurring in his half-asleep state. “Awake ‘n angry.”

Steve glanced up at him, observing his unguarded sleepy expression with sudden interest. “Sorry sweetheart, it’s just work. Tokyo hours,” he explained by way of apology. “I was thinking… want to grab lunch later today?”

Tony’s eyes fluttered open at the question and he glanced down at Steve in surprise. “Lunch? Today?”

Steve hummed in the affirmative, making an effort to keep smiling despite Tony’s sudden alarm. “Days on Tokyo time end before noon.”

“I can’t today,” Tony say quietly, then quickly cleared his throat to add, “Shopping - with, uh, Bruce. Betty’s mom is visiting, first time since grad school. He’s nervous.”

“I see,” Steve noted without inflection, then pushed up and away from Tony, moving to sit on the edge of the bed to put some space between them.

“I’m sorry,” Tony sounded genuinely regretful, and he reached for Steve in the sudden gap between them.

But it was a platitude Steve struggled to acknowledge. He stared at the phone on the nightstand, the one that had informed him of his husband’s true lunch plans, and in the end it was all Steve could do to reach over, pat Tony’s outstretched hand once, and say, “Another time.”

***

“Friendly reminder that I’m still firmly in the _This Is A Shitty Idea_ camp,” Clint noted from the passenger seat. “Also, make a right here on 14th.”

“There he is,” Steve muttered, navigating traffic with his eyes locked in on his husband, alone, pulling his own car up to park near a Vietnamese cafe.

“As if Tasha’s bugs would fail—oh, _nice!_ Pho Viet, I love that place,” Clint grinned and shoved at Steve. “If you need me to take a closer look Cap, I’m down.”

Steve shot him an unimpressed look as he pulled the car up to park at the gas station across the street. They both watched carefully as Tony stepped out of his car, pausing to look around himself multiple times on his way to the restaurant.

“Get me ears on them.”

Clint shoved a set of headphones into his hands and held the other pair to his own ears as he adjusted the receiver. There was a spike of static and some shuffling, but soon two distinct voices became clear.

“Are you sure you weren’t followed?” an unknown, masculine voice rasped.

“I kept looking back like you taught me,” they heard Tony promise. “I didn’t see anyone.”

Clint snorted, but quickly schooled his expression with another glance from Steve.

“Okay. It’s just, things are a bit hot for me right now. If I get a signal, I may have to leave suddenly.”

“I understand,” Tony hurried to assure him.

“It’s my job to risk my life, but not yours. I feel bad about bringing you into this,” the other man bemoaned regretfully, “but you’re the only one I can trust.”

This time, even Steve rolled his eyes. “Who is this guy?” Clint mouthed, but Steve only shrugged to express his ignorance.

“Where were you last week?” Tony asked in hushed excitement, then more softly added, “were you on a mission?”

The other voice hurried to shush him, then in an answering whisper said, “We say op. Covert operation. And yes: this one got a little rough.”

“Worse than Cairo?” Tony wondered, clearly stunned.

“Cairo was a day at the beach next to this,” the other voice confessed wryly.

Steve and Clint look up at each other, wide-eyed, shocked with the dawning realization.

“Guy’s a spook!” Clint cried, but Steve waved a hand at him and pointed to a tablet discarded in backseat.

“For who?”

Clint booted up the security system on the tablet and waited for their remote database to load. “Dammit, what if he’s working Tony to get to you?” he muttered impatiently as the tablet took an age and a day to do its work. But when he glanced over at Steve to continue theorizing, Steve’s expression was downright murderous, and Clint instinctively turned defensive. “It’s a legitimate concern we need to consider, Cap.”

Over the headphones they heard a crackle of paper being folded and passed across the table, and the unknown voice said, “Did you read the papers yesterday?”

“I did,” Tony answered, a little breathless.

“Sometimes a story is a mask for a covert operation. See,” and there was a soft shuffle of paper again. “Two men killed in a restroom, and unidentified men in a running shootout, ending at the Marriot.”

Clint paused his hissed litany of curses at the standard SHIELD issue tablet and turned to stare Steve. “... Did he just—?”

“ _That was you?!_ ” Tony breathed, awestruck. “That was you on that horse?”

“You recognize my style,” the other responded with an audible smile. “See, I said you were a natural at this.”

Clint dropped the tablet in disbelief, suddenly laughing. “He’s a phony, he’s taking credit for our moves!”

But inside the restaurant, Tony was captivated. “Tell me what happened,” he pleaded. “Who were they? What did they want?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t say.”

“But—you can trust me, completely,” Tony swore.

“I know,” the other voice assured him. “But it could compromise your safety too much if you knew certain things.”

“Right,” Tony swallowed, repentant. “Right, of course. It’s just, I was worried when I didn’t hear from you that night.”

“It’s strange,” the other said wistfully, “I knew I was in the thoughts of someone who cared for me when I was shooting it out with those assassins.”

The headphones in Steve’s hands snapped and crumbled, and Clint lunged across the car to restrain him before Steve could break the car door open and charge into the restaurant like some vindictive bull. “No! Stop it—Steve!”

Distantly, from the headphones Clint had dropped in his rush to grab Steve, they heard the conversation continue.

“Three of them, hardly worth talking about. Two of them won’t bother me again.”

“And you chased the third?”

“Yeah,” the other sighed. “Something came over me, I just had to nail him, no matter what the risk. It was pretty hairy, I thought he had me a couple of times. But, I really can’t take credit.”

Tony hummed curiously. “You can’t?”

“It’s the training,” the other explained. “It shaped me into a lethal instrument. Now, I react without thinking.”

While Clint was still hanging on him in a chokehold, Steve paused at that comment, horrified by the idiocy. “He’s a what now?”

Clint outright snickered. “I’m starting to like this guy.” Steve growled and turned a sudden hard look on him, and Clint quickly clarified, “But we’re still totally going to kill him. Duh.”

“What is it that you want me to do?” Tony whispered, and Steve forcibly shrugged Clint off to snatch up the only remaining headphones discarded in the passenger footwell.

“Not here,” the other said firmly. “I’ll call you and we’ll rendezvous again.”

“You’ll call me then?” Tony asked. “Soon?”

“When I can,” the other promised, “now go!”

Steve and Clint ducked down a little in the car and watched Tony hurry to his own car and speed away. Moments later, another man strolled out of the restaurant, tall, blond, and roguishly disheveled. He whistled to himself and twirled his keys around a finger in his right hand in a satisfied delight, and hopped into a classic Corvette parked near Steve and Clint’s unmarked SUV.

They followed him for nearly half an hour before they saw the guy pull into a run-down used car lot. There was a hodge-podge of makes and models lined up around the lot in no particular order, some less than whole, and others aspiring to be classics. From across the street, Steve and Clint watch the guy back the Corvette into an open space in the front line and reach into the backseat to replace the FOR SALE sign onto the dash of the car.

“He’s a goddamn used car salesman,” Clint crowed, already commemorating this new low on Snapchat so Natasha could share in the joy. “This just keeps getting better,” he snickered to himself, then spared a sympathetic glance for Steve. “Sorry, Steve. I know this must be painful.”

But Steve had his sight set on the greasy liar who was clearly weaseling his way into Tony’s affections. Clint managed to snap a photo of Steve’s vicious expression for Nat (“ _Think our Hammer Tech could ever be this deadly?_ ”) before Steve stepped out of the car and jogged across the street to the used car lot.

Clint considered his options: a predictably fruitless attempt at wrestling Steve into submission and talking sense into him, or letting the man try his hand at subtle infiltration. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and finally just shrugged to himself.

“Well, I’m sure this won’t end horribly.”

***

Steve lingered around the Corvette no more than a minute or two before the same greasy salesman from earlier bounced jauntily out to greet him, talking well before he had even reached him. “It wants you, too!” he called, grinning amiably and sidling up beside Steve to pat the car affectionately. “Feel it vibrate? How about a spin?”

Without waiting for an answer, he opened the passenger side door for Steve and urged him to give it a try. Steve, obligingly, walked around the car and folded himself into the passenger seat. The salesman ran around to the other side and took a running leap into the driver’s seat, wasting no time revving the engine. “You gotta jump in,” he confided in Steve. “That’s rule number one. It takes a little practice, but there’s no way around it. See, it’s not just a car, it’s a total image: an identity you have to go for. This isn’t a high-tech sports car; it doesn’t even handle that great. But that’s not the idea, you know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah,” Steve answered noncommittally, fingering the leather interior absently.

“I’m Ty, Ty Stone,” the salesman said to finally introduce himself, offering his hand for Steve to shake. Steve glanced down at the man’s hand, hesitating for only a moment before he took it in his own and shook firmly.

“Steve Grant.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Steve. This is your classic 1959 Corvette, but I’m sure that’s not what we’re here for, is it?” Ty turned to give Steve a broad, lascivious grin. “What are we really talking about? Pussy, am I right?”

Steve returned a low chuckle, nodding along. “Absolutely,” he agreed, and coughed up a laugh when Ty laughed with delight.

“Well, then this is a vital piece of equipment. Used properly, this could change your life,” he elaborated magnanimously. “See, all you do is cruise. No racing; this ain’t some Ferrari. You check out the scenery, let the scenery check you out… you take it slow. Old cars are like good women: they heat up fast.”

Steve ground his teeth together and smirked back, prompting him along. “Keep talking.”

“Let’s face it: the ‘Vette gets them wet! But it’s not enough,” Ty said sagely, “if you really want to close escrow, you gotta have an angle.”

“And you’ve got one,” Steve deduced.

“It’s killer! I mean, look at me,” the salesmen waved at hand down at himself. “Not bad, but not exceptional either. No, really, I can be honest. But I’ve got’em lining up, and not just skanks either. Some are, but—”

“What’s your angle?” Steve interrupted.

“Sorry,” Ty laughed. “Trade secret, I’m afraid.”

“Sure,” Steve said through a grin. “Set me up and then don’t tell me.”

That was all it took. Ty leaned forward conspiratorially, and said, “Okay, just ask yourself: what do women really want? You take these bored housewives, married to the same guy for years… stuck in a rut, you know what I’m saying?” He paused dramatically and gave Steve a meaningful look before continuing. “They need some release. The promise of adventure, a hint of danger—and I create that for them.”

“Oh,” Steve answered with feigned realization. “So you lie to them the whole time? I couldn’t do that.”

“Well,” Ty said, dragging the word out thoughtfully, “think of it as playing a role. This is their fantasy, you have to work with their dreams. Get them out of their daily suburban grind for a few hours.”

Steve made a show of considering it. “Isn’t that hard to keep up in the long-run?”

“Doesn’t matter. I like change,” Ty shrugged. “It doesn’t even have to be with women. Constant turnover: as soon as I close the deal, it’s one or two more times, then adios!”

“Use’em and lose’em,” Steve summarized for lack of anything else to say.

“Exactly! The trick is picking your target,” Ty explained, counting out his various options on his fingers. “First, decide what you want. Blowjob? Pick a fatty. Ass? Men are the safer bet; most women wouldn’t even consider it. You want your dick worshipped? Bag a housewife. You get their pilot lit, these babes will do anything.”

Steve glanced out the window as if in thought, until he finally asked, “What about their partners? Their husbands?”

“Dickless,” Ty scoffed. “If they took care of business, I’d be out of business, know what I mean?”

“Those idiots,” Steve agreed with a quiet, hollow laugh. “You working on someone right now?”

“I’ve always got a couple on the hook,” Ty smirked, pulling the car up into a convenience store parking lot and holding up the keys for Steve. “How about you take the wheel for a while?”

“Sure,” said Steve, taking the keys out of his hand and climbing out of the car. The switched seats easily enough, with Steve only having minor trouble pushing his seat back to make room for his legs. Once he navigated back into traffic, he gave a little shrug and said, “So, tell me more?”

“What can I say?” Ty wondered philosophically, lounging comfortably in the passenger seat. “I’m working on one right now, got him panting like a dog. It’s great; just the way he looks at me gets my blood pumping.”

Unconsciously, Steve’s hands clenched the wheel tighter, and he struggled to avoid leaving a permanent imprint on the wheel. “What does he do?”

“Some kinda engineer,” Ty said with a shrug. “Married to a boring jerk accountant or something. You know, he could be so hot if he wanted to be. He’s like a dying plant, he just needs a little water.”

“And with you, he gets hot, right?”

“Red hot,” Ty confirmed emphatically, “mouth that could suck-start a leafblower, ass like a teenage boy—and his thighs, man, they _steam._ ” And when Ty laughed, Steve laughed along, brittle and hollow, focusing on the road and on not breaking the steering wheel or Ty’s neck.

“Must be great in bed then,” he ground out in a poor imitation of a chuckle, some desperate stab at finding out whether or not Tony had already been unfaithful.

But beside him, Ty suddenly sat up in alarm. “Hey—slow down, you’re gonna miss the turn!”

Without batting an eye, Steve cranked the wheel and went barreling into the lot at forty, then immediately pulled the emergency brake, slewing the car into a smoking bootlegger-180. It screeched backward, sliding right into its earlier parking space perfectly. He threw the car into park and looked at Ty expectantly.

“See?” Ty answered a little shakily, still glancing surreptitiously around them in bug-eyed shock. “You and this car were meant for each other. Why fight it? What do you say, should we get started on the paperwork?”

Steve frowned in thought, then with a shrug said, “Let me think about it. Hold it a day for me?”

Ty’s face dropped for a moment before he schooled his features back into a grin, and with a wink he promised Steve, “Because it’s you? Sure thing.”

***

“What do you think the chances are that the Sand Spider is completely separate from the Ten Rings?” Clint asked as he drove Steve home one evening a week later. Steve hummed in the passenger seat, preoccupied with the sheafs of wiretap transcripts from the day. “You know, a Hans Gruber character who’s in it for the money, not the ideology. That’s like, ten times worse, it’s a needle in a haystack, you know?”

“Clint, give me the page,” Steve said instead of answering his question.

Clint frowned and turned to look at Steve. “What are you talking about?”

“Tony’s transcript, the pages skip from nine to eleven. Where’s page ten?”

“What? That can’t be right, it’s gotta be a typo—” Clint began to say, and when Steve’s glare didn’t inspire a better answer, Steve shouldered the car door open and stepped out of the speeding car. Clint only barely slammed down on the brakes fast enough, swerving the car up on the sidewalk in time. “ _Steve!_ What the hell!”

Steve marched around the SUV and hammered his fist through the passenger window behind Clint, showering his partner in shards of glass. “For the last time, Barton: Give me the goddamn page!”

“Jeez, Steve. Seek help,” Clint muttered and fished the crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket. Steve grabbed it from him without so much as a thanks, straightening it out to read at once. Toward the bottom, one particular exchange caught his eyes:

_Stone: Tony, I need your help. Can you meet me tonight?_

_Stark: What’s happened?_

_Stone: It’s serious. That’s all I can say. Meet me on K Street under the Key Bridge, eight sharp._

Steve blinked wildly for a moment, then quickly glanced at his watch. “Fuck! It’s almost eight,” he swore, then almost tore the driver’s side door off its hinges in his hurry to open it. “Get out: I’m driving. You get me a location on Tony.”

They both jumped into the car and Steve tore off into traffic, speeding with an unhealthy disregard for traffic laws and pedestrians.

“He’s still at the house,” Clint said at first, then with a glance at the time realized, “Shit. He probably left his watch at home.”

Steve growled and snatched up the radio off the dash. “Unit Two? Unit Seven?”

“Seven here,” Coulson answered promptly.

“This is Two,” Rumlow checked in a moment later.

“Immediate roll, acquire subject at K Street and Key Bridge,” Steve rattled off immediately, ignoring Clint facepalming next to him. “Vehicle is red and white convertible. You have six minutes.”

“Roger, One. Rolling,” Coulson confirmed, followed closely by Two’s response.

“Steve,” Clint said carefully, “Steve, I know this is a trying time, but what the fuck, man? Have you lost your mind? You can’t pull agents off a priority surveillance to follow your husband! It’s a gross misappropriation of SHIELD resources, it’s—it’s a breach of national security.”

Steve drove on, pushing well past 90 miles an hour and ignoring his partner.

“You copy, Steve? This is too far. You’re losing it big-time, I can’t let you do this.”

“What are you going to do, Clint? Tell?”

“Can’t you see this is the whole team you’re risking?” Clint groaned. “So yeah, sure your life is in the gutter. So your husband is banging a used car salesman. I know it’s humiliating, but damnit, Steve, take it like a man!”

Next to him, Steve only shrugged, unmoved by Clint’s argument. “You tell on me, I’ll tell on you.”

Clint blinked at him, suddenly suspicious. “What’re you talking about? I’m clean as a preacher’s sheets—”

“What about that time in Moldova when you busted a six-week operation because you were busy getting a blowjob?”

Barton immediately quieted down, contrite. “You know about that, huh?” Steve’s glare could have killed a lesser man, and ultimately Clint just gave a fatalistic shrug and pointed at the traffic ahead. “Alright. Let’s take Franklin, it’s a lot quicker.”

Steve made the turn in a squeal of tires.

“Seven here,” Coulson checked in over the radio. “Two men in the vehicle. The passenger has his head in the driver’s lap. Subject southbound on Key Bridge. Seven in pursuit.”

“Roger, Seven,” Steve growled back, then opened the line again to call in another unit. “One to Condor: Do you have visual?”

“We are so dead,” Clint muttered to himself. “Fury’s going to personally kill us all.”

“Roger, One, this is Condor. The subject is in sight.” Sharon responded moments later from the chopper. “Repeat, we have the ball. We have a good lock-up on the infrared. Uh,” she paused, then couldn’t resist snickering. “Yeah, passenger’s got his head in the driver’s lap alright. Wahoo!”

Clint glanced across at Steve and cleared his throat. “Maybe he’s sleepy?”

***

The headlights of the ‘Vette lit up a ratty, single-wide mobile home on the outskirts of a trailer park off the highway.

“My place in the city is too hot right now,” Ty explained when he noticed Tony’s uncertain glance around the trailer park. He opened the door easily and let Tony in ahead of himself. “So is the penthouse in New York. But this place is safe; they would never look for me here.”

While Ty fought to close the lock on the door, Tony stood awkwardly in the middle of the junky space, taking it all in cautiously. The stains and disarray, the anachronistic CD player, the ten dollar wine—none of it really fit his idea of how a secret agent would live.

“To our assignment,” Ty murmured sweetly, pressing a glass of wine into Tony’s hand to celebrate.

“What’s going on Ty?” Tony asked after a minimal sip. “What is it exactly that you need me to do?”

Ty smiled, reaching to take Tony’s left hand and giving it a squeeze. “Tony, I want you to be my lover.”

Instinctively, Tony pulled his hand back and took an additional step back. “You know I’m married.”

“No!” Ty rushed to say, “just for the operation in Jakarta. You see,” he explained a little more calmly, recognizing the glint of curiosity in Tony’s eyes at the mention of Jakarta. “They’ll be looking for a man traveling alone. For my safety, and for the mission, I need to be married.”

“We—we’re going to Jakarta?”

“Tony, there’s a double agent in my outfit,” Ty said and sat down, patting the seat on the ratty love seat for Tony to sit beside him. “I don’t know who it is, and there’s no one I can trust except for you. Can you get away? Just for two days.”

“I don’t know,” Tony said thoughtfully, running a hand over his jaw in thought. “Work would be easy, but what would I tell Steve?”

“Here, sit down,” Ty repeated, and this time Tony sat. “I understand if your answer is no, Tony, I know I’m asking you to make a big sacrifice here. And if you can’t do it, this won’t be any more dangerous than what I signed up for,” Ty added more quietly in the end. “After all, there’s a reason we don’t earn retirement.”

“I’ll do it,” Tony said in a rush. “You can’t—no. No. Of course, I’ll do it.”

Ty looked at him in wide-eyed wonder, shaking his head in disbelief. “You are so incredibly brave,” he murmured, and gently took Tony’s hand in his own. Tony stared down at their hands together for a moment, recalling a similar experience not long ago in Steve’s hands, but he willed the memory away with a shudder. “I have to remind myself of the fear that you must be feeling. I’ve lived like this for years, so I’m used to it; every day I get up, I think it might be my last. But it makes you appreciate life, and the moment, because it may be all you have.”

Ty moved even closer on the couch, his thigh pressing heavily against Tony’s. “To pull this cover story off, we have to look exactly like two people who are intimate with each other. The enemy can spot a fake easily,” he slid one of his hands off of Tony’s to curl around his knee instead, and Tony jumped at the unexpectedly forward touch, then immediately laughed nervously at his reaction. Ty laughed, too, and sympathetically said, “See what I mean? Try to relax, that reaction would give us away in a second.”

“It’s just,” Tony cleared his throat and struggled not to put space between them. “It’s been seven years since anyone but Steve touched me like that, and I—”

“Just relax,” Ty said again, giving his knee a pat this time rather than a full squeeze. “There, see? That’s better. Let yourself slip into the role.”

Ty put his arm around Tony’s shoulders and pulled him slowly into a kiss. Tony stared, his eyes unwilling to close, but his body equally unwilling to pull away from the kiss. The whole moment seemed more like an out-of-body experience than reality, and he couldn’t believe the situation he was in even as he felt himself lowered onto the couch with Ty’s eager tongue exploring his mouth.

“There you go, that’s right,” Ty murmured softly, bringing his hands up along Tony’s thighs to give them both a gentle squeeze, guiding them apart and around his body when Tony suddenly exploded in outrage, shoving at him repeatedly until he had to leverage a leg between them and kick Ty off himself.

“No! No, this is—not happening,” he spat, rolling right off the couch and struggling to his feet to shuffle farther away from Ty. “I can’t. I can’t do it, I’m sorry, Ty.”

Ty coughed and struggled up from his knees where Tony’s kick had left him, and, out of breath, he followed Tony and stammered, “If not for me, do it for America?”

Tony had a moment to stare in bewildered disbelief, aware for the first time of how pathetic Ty was, when the trailer and everything in it rocked with a violent explosion, and the entire back wall blew outward. The concussion threw Ty forward into Tony, and together they bounced off the bed and rolled into a tiny crevice between the double bed and the trailer wall, with Tony pinned to the floor under Ty.

Five black-suited figures swarmed the cramped trailer home, backlit by the xenon lights of the helicopter to blind their prey to everything beyond the five people crowding into the trailer with machine guns. Smoke and dust filled the air, rising in the rotor-wash, forcing both of them to look away or cover their faces to keep the dust and debris out of their eyes.

The figures lunged for them, two of them dragging Ty off of Tony, while another man jerked Tony up to his feet to tie him up and pull him along. Tony went willingly as far as he had to to get past the worst effects of the helicopter lights, and as soon as he could make out an escape route in the darkness, he forcefully shoved back into the large body holding his zip-tied hands, stomping down on the man’s foot viciously before whipping around to knee him right in the balls. His assailant groaned and fell to his knees, giving Tony precious seconds to tear away and run into the maze of trailers around them for cover.

Two of the black-clad figures gave chase, pounding after Tony. The first one nearly tackled him to the ground, but with a quick twist of his body and a low crouch he turned the tackle into a less effective chokehold—without a moment's thought he forced his chin down for leverage and bit down into the arm with all his might, drawing a deep cry of pain from the man holding him and, again, another chance at freedom.

But the third attacker was already there, and with procedural precision, he clipped Tony across the back of the head with the butt of his rifle, knocking him out cold into the mud.


	3. Chapter 3

When Tony faded back to consciousness, he blinked his eyes open into darkness. It took him some time to gain enough awareness to notice the weight of the hood over his head, but he quickly tore at it and threw it away, staggering to his feet and shuffling away from it in an instinctive but vain grasp for safety. 

He was alone. He was alone in an empty concrete room, furnished only with one stool, one dangling lightbulb, and one enormous two-way mirror. There was no door that he could see, and no sound to indicate other signs of life, from Ty or from those who attacked them. When nothing seemed to be happening, he shuffled a little farther into the room, following the wall to the nearest edge of the two-way mirror. He tapped the glass once, twice, then stepped back closer to the wall again. 

“For your sakes, I hope it’s not Thursday morning,” he announced to the room. “There will be someone coming for me. And, between you and me, he’s not as friendly as I am.” 

*** 

“Tell that to my arm,” Clint groused and rubbed at his bandages. “Who is he talking about?” 

“Must be Colonel Rhodes,” Steve said with a sigh, scrubbing a hand over his face. 

“Oh, great. Just what we need, the Air Force knocking down our door,” Clint cheered in monotone. He rolled closer to the console, hand on the microphone key. “Ready to get this party started?” 

He nodded in the affirmative, and Clint flicked on the microphone. Steve watched Tony, still standing to the far near-left corner of the room, almost hidden from view. 

“Sit down,” he said, quietly at first, but in the silence of the interrogation room his digitally transformed voice still broke the silence with a mechanical boom, and Tony startled in sudden shock, pressing himself further into the corner. 

“D’awww, wook at the wittle bunny wabbit,” Clint cooed, out of range, leaning back in his seat as if to enjoy the show. 

“I said sit down,” Steve repeated, and this time Tony seemed to jerk to attention, and he slowly made his way to the center of the room where the stool awaited him. “Who do you work for?” 

“Stane Inc.,” Tony answered slowly. “I’m just a grunt, an engineer.” 

“Of course, Mr. Stark,” Steve answered through the microphone. “And what were you doing with the international terrorist, Carlos the Jackal? Assembling furniture?” 

“First of all,” Tony growled, “that is _not_ what engineers do. Second, he—” he hesitated then, as if suddenly aware of his circumstances, and with less force added, “he, he said he was an American agent.” 

“How long have you been a member of his faction?” 

“Faction?” Tony asked, startled. “I don’t know anything about a -a faction. I just met Ty, if that’s even his name,” he added, stammering and finally leaning against the stool for support. “It was a few weeks ago at Philz. I barely know him.” 

Clint snorted and rolled his chair back to the console. “That’s not what it looked like when we found you,” he commented through the microphone with a smirk. Steve scowled at him and pressed a finger to his own lips in a silent command to shut up. 

On the other side of the mirror, Tony’s gaze dropped to the floor, flushing with the memory and almost shrinking in his seat. 

“How did you meet him?” Steve asked instead. 

“I was just there, I was just grabbing coffee, and Ty -this man,” Tony frowned, flustered. “He approached me and put this envelope next to my coffee before I could pick it up and he just—he,” he shrugged, struggling for words for a few beats, “he asked me to keep it for him, that it was important; ‘more important than national security,’ he said.” 

Clint frowned at that, and before Steve could stop him he reached for the microphone button and asked, “And you believed him?” 

“I thought he was flirting,” Tony muttered. 

Clint smirked as Steve’s hand shot for the on button this time. “Repeat your last statement.” 

Tony rolled his eyes, took a deep breath and loudly enunciated, “I thought he was flirting. _Flirting,_ ” he repeated a third time. “A little harmless fun.” 

“So you did what he asked of you?” Steve prompted, keeping his tone forcefully neutral. 

“He left before I knew what it was,” Tony admitted, looking straight on at the mirror. “There was a thumb drive, and inside the envelope he’d written that he would get in touch.” 

“And what was on that thumb drive?”  
  


“Topographic maps and spreadsheets,” Tony answered. “Latitudes and longitudes, directives in a non-Russian Slavic language. The only part Google could translate said ‘enriched uranium.’” 

“You didn’t contact the police?” 

“And say what?” Tony demanded impatiently. “Hi, I’m an engineer for the world’s leading weapons manufacturing company and I accepted information possibly leading to the most critical ingredient for nuclear weaponry from a stranger because I craved—” his words died in his throat, and he cleared his throat before weakly finishing. “Because it was exciting.” 

This time when Clint reached for the button, Steve intercepted him, gave him a quelling look over the microphone before he himself, calmly, asked. “What happened next?” 

“He called me three days later. He told me to meet him at Overlook Park. I returned the thumb drive.” 

Steve scowled, frustrated by the frugal economy of Tony’s answers and trying not to fill in the unspoken events of them meeting too vividly. He rubbed at his eyes, shaking his head slowly. 

Next to him, Clint watched silently, giving Steve a moment to collect himself before he flicked the microphone on again, and with dispassionate detachment asked Tony, “Why did you continue to see him?” 

Tony sighed and leaned back on his perch, then in monotone said, “Because he needed my help.” 

“Not because you were attracted to him?” Clint asked for clarification, watching Steve as his partner finally, eagerly, dared to look up to observe Tony. 

“No,” was all Tony said, his jaw set. 

Steve dove forward on impulse to keep the microphone on. “You weren’t attracted to him at all?” 

Clint rolled his eyes and looked away until he heard Tony’s answer. 

“Well,” Tony hedged cautiously. “Maybe a little.” 

Clint frowned hard and shoved at Steve for control of the damn console, and demanded, “Is this a common thing for you? Cheating?” 

“No,” Tony bit back, his hands fisted against his thighs. “Never.” 

“So this was your first time,” Clint deduced. 

“I wasn’t cheating!” Tony snarled, stepping off the stool and striding toward the mirror when Steve took control of the microphone again. 

“Tell me about your husband, Mr. Stark.” 

Tony stopped dead in his tracks and blinked at the mirror in confusion. “Steve?” he wondered. “What can I say about Steve? He… he works for the Smithsonian, he works with a team to curate their exhibits on World War II, he...” Tony trailed off briefly, grasping for more things to say. “He volunteers when he can with the VA.” 

Steve watched Tony’s expression carefully, and straightened up to steel himself for the answer he needed to know. “Would you say he was boring, then?” 

Tony frowned down at his left hand, fingering the ring absently. “Yeah,” he confessed with a fatalistic shrug. “I suppose he is.” 

“So sex with him isn’t exactly making your flag wave anymore,” Clint commented, sneaking it in while Steve was absorbing Tony’s honesty. Steve snapped to attention when Clint’s words sunk in, and he cuffed him hard in the shoulder, but it did nothing to wipe the smirk from his partner’s face. 

“That’s none of your fucking business!” Tony spat, advancing on the mirror again, unarmed though he was. “What the hell kind of questions are these?” 

“Do not forget that you are in a lot of trouble here, Mr. Stark,” Steve interrupted in the low, commanding tone he never otherwise used on his husband. “I suggest you cooperate. If we want to know the most intimate details of your life, it is in your best interest to tell us.” 

Tony glowered at the mirror, his fists tense and clearly shaking at his sides. “Then leave Steve out of this. My husband is a good man.” 

“But he’s not exactly ringing your bell lately, right?” Clint asked when Steve turned on the microphone to speak, and Steve immediately released the microphone for mute to glare at Clint. 

“I’m trying to handle my marriage here, do you mind?” Clint raised his palms in forfeit, rolling his chair back from the console and out of range. Steve gave him a nod and turned back to Tony. “Why did you go to Carlos’ hideout?” 

“He wanted me to go with him on a mission, to pose as his partner.” 

“And,” Steve stammered momentarily in surprise, “you—you agreed?” 

“Yes,” Tony forced through his gritted teeth. 

“Why?” 

“I don’t know. I guess I needed something.” 

“What did you need?” Steve pressed on, not unkindly. 

“I needed to feel alive. I wanted to _do something,_ something outrageous. And,” Tony added hesitantly, retreating to stand awkwardly by the stool again. “It felt good to be needed. To be trusted. To… to feel special.” 

Tony’s pitiful expression overwhelmed Steve’s instincts, and he leaned forward to offer words of comfort when Clint grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him away. Steve glanced back at him with a frown, but Clint only shook his head and urged Steve to look through the mirror again with a nod of his head. 

“There’s so much I wanted to do in this life,” Tony went on to say in the extended silence. “And the sand’s running out of the hourglass and I haven’t done any of it—none, none of the daring, reckless things I dreamed of doing my whole life, I just kept doing _the right thing._ And look where that’s got me,” he huffed in a self-deprecating laugh. But a moment later his expression became dangerously stony, and he glared ahead at the mirror. “And frankly, I don’t give a shit if you understand this or not.” 

Both Steve and Clint stared at him in surprise. “There’s the wildcat that bit me,” Clint commented quietly, almost to himself. 

“This Ty,” Steve said over the comm after some silence. “Did you sleep with him?” 

“No.”  
  


Clint rolled his eyes and muttered “yeah right,” to himself, and Steve asked again, “You didn’t have sexual relations with him?” 

“Fuck you,” Tony hissed acidly. “If you’re going to ask me every goddamn question twice, this is going to take a really long time. And I have to get home before my husband worries.” 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Steve started to say, but in the interrogation room, Tony lost it. In a rage of fury and fear, he leapt off the stool and snatched it up like a bat in a charge against the mirror. 

“Let me out of here!” he roared, swinging the chair at the dead center of the two-way mirror with all his might. 

“Answer the question—” Steve demanded, but even his most forceful field command voice was not giving Tony pause. 

“I did not sleep with him,” he yelled, punctuating every word with increasingly forceful blows. “You hear me, you chickenshit son of a bitch—” 

Steve startled the first time the mirror shook on impact, but Clint waved off his concern. “Don’t worry man, everyone tries,” he said. “It’s unbreakable.” 

But with another swing a lateral fracture cracked the glass clean through, and soon a spiderweb of fractures compromised the structural integrity of the mirror. Steve and Clint shared a shaken look, realizing it wouldn’t take him long to beat his way through into the control room. 

“You know,” Clint said conversationally, “he could be telling the truth?” 

“Wait!” Steve called over the microphone, trying to get Tony’s attention again. “Calm down, Mr. Stark. There is only one more question left.” 

Tony paused, mid-swing and panting from exertion and boiling anger, and in a long stretch of silence he thought very hard about his alternatives. In the end he threw the stool to the ground and gestured impatiently at the window. 

“Christ. Fine, what is it?” 

“Do you still love your husband?” 

“What kind of—” Tony complained, and rubbed at his eyes with both hands, furtively scrubbing at his face. “Yes,” he answered finally, loud and clear. 

“Repeat your last statement.” 

“I love him,” Tony said, helpless to the slight tug of a smile on his expression. “I have always loved him, and I will always love him.” He wiped at his eyes again. “I answered your question, can I go home now? Please?” 

Clint raised his eyebrows, humming in surprise. “I bet that hurt to say,” he smirked, then he looked at Steve. “Alright, big guy. Now what?” 

But Steve was smirking, too, and it was almost enough to make Clint take out his stun-gun. “No,” he said, fully aware of his rationality landing on deaf ears. 

“There is only one solution to your problem, Mr. Stark,” Steve said into the microphone, “you must work for us.” 

“Fucking Christ,” Clint swore, shoving Steve back to force him to look away from Tony. “What are you doing, Stark? We’re done here: he didn’t cheat on you.” 

“I’m giving him an assignment,” Steve said with a pleasant smile, as if it was an obvious decision to make. “I’m offering you a choice,” he told Tony. “If you work for us, we will drop the charges and you can go back to your normal life. If you do not, you will go to federal prison immediately from here. Under the Patriot Act, you will have no right to a trial or to a phone call.” 

“But my husband—” Tony started to protest, but Steve cut him off. 

“He will never hear from you again and have to assume the worst.” 

“Oh, gee. Thanks,” Tony deadpanned. “Let me think...” 

“Yes or no.” 

“What do you think?” Tony snapped. “Of course yes! What do I have to do?” 

“You will be contacted with the assignment,” Steve promised him, and next to him Clint just started rubbing at the headache mounting behind his temples. 

Tony hesitated at the possible dismissal, and stepped closer to the fractured mirror. “My husband can’t know about this.” 

“No-one must know,” Steve agreed, “especially him. You must appear to live your life normally, conveying nothing. The security of this nation depends on it. Can you do that?” 

“Fine, yeah,” Tony shrugged, impatient. “As long as he is kept out of it. And kept safe.” 

“You will be lying to the man you love,” Steve cautioned. “The person who trusts you most in this world.” 

“Give me some credit here, I did just fine for the past two weeks,” Tony frowned. “I can do it.” 

“The codename of your contact will be Roy,” Steve said slowly with a poorly repressed grin. “And your codename will be—” 

“Don’t do it,” Tony muttered, visibly unimpressed. “Don’t you say it.” 

“Siegfried.” 

*** 

The black, unmarked van pulled up near the maw of a large, desolate quarry in the dead of night and dumped the tied-up, blindfolded used car salesman carelessly to the gravelled ground. Two men in black jumpsuits and ski-masks followed him out, and together they hauled Ty to his feet like his weight was of no consequence. 

One of them grabbed Ty by the back of the neck and shoved him stumbling ahead to the edge of a sheer drop, where his blindfold was finally whipped off his head. Ty gave a startled scream and then immediately froze in silence, overcome with terror. 

“You son of a bitch,” his assailant growled, “did you really think you could elude us forever, Carlos?” 

“W—wait, wait!” Ty nearly bounced on the balls of his feet in sudden realization, and in his excitement his voice cracked as he tried to explain. “Wait you—you got the wrong guy! My name is Tiberius, Tiberius Stone, I—I don’t know any Carlos. There’s no need to kill me, I haven’t even seen your—” His assailant pulled off his own mask in one smooth move, blond hair steadfastly flattering despite the ruffle. “—face—Shit! _Shit!_ ” 

Ty ducked his head with a sob, covering his face in a desperate show of deference until it eventually dawned on him whose face it was. He looked up then, cautiously, then brightening with hope. “It’s you! Hey—hey, you still interested in that ‘Vette at all?” 

“You can drop the act, Carlos,” Clint said impatiently, and Steve gave Ty a single shake that rattled his whole body. “The game is over. How about the next time you try a career in international terrorism, don’t document your every fucking move? Makes it a little harder to find you.” 

“What? No,” Ty stammered in his rush to make them understand, tears prickling his eyes. “You don’t understand—I sell cars. That’s all! Not even foreign cars, nothing international, I swear. I’m no terrorist—everything I said was a lie, you have to believe me! I’m a coward, if I ever even saw a gun I’d—” Clint unholstered his Beretta and lifted it to snap the muzzle right in front of Ty’s eyes as he cocked the pistol. “—I’d faint, oh _god oh God,_ please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, I’m not a spy—I’m nothing! I’m navel lint. I have to lie to get laid. And, and I don’t score much, it’s pathetic, I’m pathetic, I—” and he glanced down and whimpered, “—See? Look, _look_ would a spy pee himself?” 

Steve grimaced in disgust and glanced back at Clint; even masked, they shared an unseen shudder and reached an agreement. Clint lowered the pistol and stepped back, allowing enough space for Steve to drag Ty ahead of him, then with a final shove away from himself and from the van, released him. 

Ty whipped around on shaking legs to face them, terrified to turn his back on the agents. “Please don’t kill me, please—you can have the car for free!” 

“Take off, dipshit!” Clint yelled from the driver’s side door, but when Ty wouldn’t stop hovering around them like some mongrel dog, he took his gun out and fired three rounds into the ground at Ty’s bare feet, forcing him to stumble and dance backwards. 

As one, the two agents climbed into the car, and soon the van tore off down the road in a cloud of dust to leave Ty standing alone in the moonlight, miles from nowhere. 

*** 

When Tony got home later that night, the house was silent and dark. “Honey,” he called, a little more hopefully than usual, making a clear effort to keep his voice steady, “I’m home!” 

There was a sudden shuffle of noise upstairs, and not long after Steve’s voice answered. “Study!” 

After a quick detour to the kitchen for a couple of beers, Tony climbed the stairs and hurried up to the study, and he almost sagged with relief into the door jamb when he found Steve on the other side of the desk, clearly unbothered and mostly absorbed in whatever he was doing on the screen. He was freshly showered, and it wasn’t until Tony walked around the desk that he saw Steve was at least wearing boxers. 

“You alright, Tony?” Steve wondered and reached to pull him close, stretching up in his seat to meet him in a kiss hello. “You look a little shaken.” 

“Car died on the road,” Tony lied with a smile, then pressed another kiss to Steve’s temple. “Triple-A took forever, but whatever, it worked out. I’m home,” he added with a soft sigh, wrapping his arms loosely around Steve’s neck resting his cheek on top of Steve’s head. It took a while before he could do anything but keep his eyes shut and deeply breathe Steve in, but eventually he calmed enough to focus on what Steve was clearly researching on the screen. “Is that a beer distillery?” 

“Starkenberger Castle, on Stark Mountain in Austria,” Steve explained, leaning into Tony’s embrace. “It’s a seven-hundred year old castle, and a few years ago they converted the old fermentation cellar into a spa.” 

Tony made a little sound of surprise as he remembered the two beers he had carried up from the kitchen, and he twisted the cap off one to give to Steve before opening one for himself. “Can you drink in the pool?” 

“Well, you can’t drink the pool beer,” Steve said and took a long pull from the bottle. “Besides, that’s kept warm anyway. You can order drinking beer brewed on site though and they’ll bring it to you cold.” 

“Second honeymoon?” Tony wondered quietly, resting his head comfortably on top of Steve's head as he skimmed the photos more than the words. 

“I thought so,” Steve confessed, blushing despite himself, though Tony couldn’t see his face. “Our engagement and seventh anniversary is coming up.” 

Tony huffed a silent laugh, shaking his head a little without lifting his head off of Steve’s. “As if I could forget, it’s all on your damn birthday.” 

“Have you ever said no to anything on my birthday?” Steve reminded him, clearly more pleased with himself than repentant. “Plus, now our anniversary always comes with fireworks.” 

Tony cupped his husband’s face and gently tilted his head back to first kiss the tip of his nose, then tilt his head back farther to playfully flick his tongue up across Steve’s lips. “Babe, if it’s fireworks you’re after,” he murmured against his parted lips, “take me to bed.” 

*** 

Around him, the world crumbled to ash. He was lost. They had come for him, in the dead of night when he and Steve had gone to bed, when he lay peaceful and sated beside his husband, his cheek pillowed on Steve’s bicep and his back kissing Steve’s left side. 

They must have known Steve was a soldier, because they took him first. Like a wretched animal they dragged him out of bed, naked and startled and defenseless, and there was nothing Tony could do but watch. It all happened so fast. In front of his eyes, the men in the black suits and masks shoved Steve down to his knees, kept him there under threat of two rifles pressed to the back of his head. 

For all his strength, Steve never stood a chance. 

For all his wit and intelligence, Tony couldn’t find the words to beg for mercy. 

“You failed,” one of the men growled. “We do not accept failure.” 

“Tony,” Steve said then, loud enough to steal Tony’s attention from the assailant. “Tony, I love you.” 

Tony heaved a sob. He had so much to say, so much to ask for, to demand, but what could he do? “No,” he pleaded, clawing at the duvet as he fought the crippling panic and consuming nausea. “Don’t hurt him, don’t—” 

“Tony!” Steve cried out, trying to get his attention again, “Tony, listen to me—” 

“No,” Tony whispered, whimpered, tears scalding behind his eyes, and his whole body shook as he struggled to get the words past the gravel in his throat. “No, I can’t—” 

“Tony! Tony, sweetheart,” Steve called again, “Tony, wake up, sweetheart—” 

Startled, shattered, and gasping for breath, Tony came to life in a cold sweat, still shivering from the fear, still blind to the world and clutching at the one constant he recognized, a body he knew like an extension of his own, and his fingers dug into Steve’s flesh in a desperate effort to keep him close. 

“Tony,” Steve soothed in a quiet voice, putting on a brave, comforting smile. “You’re home, Tony, you’re home and there is nothing wrong: we’re safe, everything is alright.” 

“You,” Tony croaked around his bloated tongue. 

“I’m here, Tony,” Steve promised, kissing his forehead softly before leaning over him for a bottle of water. “Here, sit up,” he urged gently, helping Tony sit in bed to drink the water while he shifted to fit himself between Tony’s back and the cushioned headboard, his arms settled loosely on either side of his husband to receive him in a full bodied embrace. 

“I’m never sleeping again,” Tony groaned after enough water, and he shamelessly folded back into Steve’s body, his head pillowed on Steve’s chest where he could hear the steady, comforting staccato of his heartbeat. 

“Then neither am I,” Steve agreed into Tony’s bedhead, for which he (somewhat belatedly) was smacked on the shoulder. “Where you go, I go,” Steve reminded him quietly, “for better or worse. In sickness and in health.” 

“Ugh, you’re the worst,” Tony complained, but slowly his breathing started to even out, and eventually he kicked his legs out to stretch out on the mattress more comfortably. 

“I can be,” Steve faithfully agreed (again). 

“I have a real pillow,” Tony threatened, but Steve only laughed and hugged him closer just to be obnoxious. “Nobody’s impressed right now.” 

“What an honor, Odysseus in my b— _ow!_ ” he cried, releasing Tony from the embrace and instinctively rubbing at the reddening flesh of his thigh Tony had pinched. “I mean it, Tony: if you can’t sleep, neither will I.” 

Tony studied Steve’s expression, then with a wry smile finally relented. “When’re you going to work?” he mumbled, attempting to sound sleepy. 

Steve glanced at the clock on Tony’s side of the bed, then shrugged. “Supposed to be there in two hours, but there’s no meeting scheduled. I can stay. They’ll call if they need me.” 

“I took the day off, Rhodey’s in town,” Tony informed him quietly, answering the unspoken question. “So... whose turn is it?” 

But Steve was already reaching for the paperback lying on his nightstand, stretching and groping for it in his stubborn effort to grab it without displacing Tony. With a last determined push he snatched it off the table and settled back against the headboard. 

“Mine,” he said, as if it wasn’t already obvious, and he opened the book to where they had last left off. “Chapter seven. _One hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred pair of oxen,_ James Howell.” 

Tony grimaced at the introductory quote, unhappy with the absence of logic. “What does _that_ mean?” 

“I have no idea,” Steve murmured, already studying the first page. After a few moments of silence, he started to read, clearly and with no particular character voice. “I swung the Kawasaki along Victoria Embankment just for the hell of it. To clear its pipes and mine.” 

Tony snorted at the juvenile turn of phrase, and wordlessly Steve brought a hand down to lightly cup over his mouth, asking for silence without forcing it as he continued to read. Eventually, Tony quieted. 

“Out on the pavement, Woolf had squeezed my arm and told me to sleep on it, which gave me a nasty jolt because I’d been watching Sarah’s bottom as he spoke.” Tony snickered into Steve’s palm again, and this time even Steve couldn’t help grinning, too. As they read on, Steve eventually slid his hand to settle around the nape of Tony’s neck, absently rubbing the muscles knotted at the base of his skull. 

“I once met an RAF pilot who told me how he and his navigator had had to eject from their very expensive Tornado GR1, three hundred feet above the Yorkshire dales, because of what he called a ‘bird strike’,” Steve read and snorted so unexpectedly Tony tipped his head back to look up at him. “This, rather unfairly in my view, made it sound as if it was the bird’s fault; as if the little feathered chap had deliberately tried to head-butt twenty tons of metal traveling in the opposite direction at just under the speed of sound, out of spite.” 

Tony whined and turned to press his face against Steve’s left pectoral as he laughed again, a muffled “that’s _terrible_ ” just barely intelligible to Steve’s ears. 

Steve paused then, and possibly too casually suggested, “That is a little terrible. We can put this down, maybe try to sleep?” 

“Terrible in a good way,” Tony clarified happily, but with a rising suspicion he lifted his head from its comfortable cushion to meet Steve’s eye. “What, why?” he asked, studying Steve’s wary face then immediately guessed, “He wipes out on the bike, doesn’t he?” 

Steve’s expression twisted as he tried to find a way to agree without possibly agitating Tony after a nightmare, but Tony waved off his concern and settled back comfortably to listen. “Keep reading, Shaherezada.” 

“These railings,” Steve dutifully picked back up, “my railings, were there to do a job. They were there to defend democracy. They were hand-built by craftsmen named Ted, or Ned, or possibly Bill. They were railings fit for heroes. I slept.” He turned the page and cleared his throat, as if that would somehow postpone the hard part. “A face. A very big face. A very big face with only enough skin to cover a very small face, so that everything about it looked tight. Tight jaw, tight nose, tight eyes. Every muscle and tendon on the face bulged and rippled. It looked like a crowded lift,” and by that point he wasn’t sure who started it, but they were both snickering without sympathy. Steve continued, reading more quickly in the description of injuries, almost getting through half a page before he had to swallow down a chuckle. 

“The left knee answered my letter by return of post, which was nice, but the right felt wrong. Thick and hot. Come back to that. Thighs. Left okay, right not so good. Pelvic girdle seemed all right, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I put some weight on it. Testicles. Ah, there was another matter entirely,” he grinned, reading along with feeling, “I didn’t have to put weight on those to know they were in a poor state. There were too many of them and they hurt so much.” 

Tony squirmed. Faintly at first, as if uncomfortable, shifting against Steve’s body briefly to find a better position. “Read that again.” 

“Ton- _y!_ ” Steve gasped sharply when Tony’s warm, calloused hand wrapped around his half-interested cock and gave him a lazy upward stroke. 

“How many times have you wiped out on your bike, Steven?” Tony murmured wetly over Steve’s throat, mouthing his leisurely way down to his chest. “This inspection is well overdue—” 

From down the hall echoed the ringing of their landline in the study. It was a sound they never heard anymore; modernity had trudged on and turned the landline into a dusty memory, but even in competition with Steve’s deeper breathing and attempts at self-control, the insistent ringing dominated the room. 

“Who the hell—” Steve growled, but Tony only snickered and gleefully slid down the length of his body. He lavished an open-mouth kiss to Steve’s hip, sucking hard on the flesh and letting it out between his teeth, then promptly climbed out of bed to go answer the phone. The call was well on its fourth or fifth ring when Tony snatched up the receiver. 

“Buenas?” 

“Siegfried?” answered a metallic, monotone voice. 

Tony closed his eyes and walked further into the study, leaning his hip against the heavy desk for support. “Yes,” he said simply, keeping his voice down. 

“Listen carefully,” it instructed him, or perhaps threatened him. “Go to the Hotel Marquis in one hour. Pick up an envelope marked Siegfried at the front desk. Dress professionally.” 

Tony blinked. “That’s it?” 

His only answer was the sudden whine of the dead line. He lingered in the study a little longer, staring blindly at the mute receiver as he tried to think through a plan. Eventually, when he felt enough time had passed, he hurried back to the bedroom. 

“That was Rhodey. Something’s up,” he explained as he made a beeline for the bathroom, breezing past their bed and Steve. As the water started up, he walked back to bed and kissed Steve in apology. “Rain check?” 

“He’s your best friend, Tony,” Steve answered simply. He reached for Tony’s hand and brushed his lips across his palm. “Go. Call me if there’s anything I can do.” 

***

The envelope at the Marquis contained a burner phone and a business card for an Ashley Buckman at Hammer Industries. Tony casually made his way to the ground floor restroom and slipped into an empty stall where he could turn on the phone in peace. 

There was one number programmed into the contacts, and one unheard voicemail awaited him. 

_Intelligence on recent illegal arms trades with foreign insurgents are presumed to be protected on the private servers at Hammer Industries. An interview has been arranged at 10:30am where you will be given direct access to their internal database for one hour. Call when the ledgers are in your possession._

Tony stared at the phone for several minutes after the voicemail ended, half-expecting it to fizzle and pop to an early end in his hand. But the phone just sat in his palm, inanimate, no explosion or even a clue to narrow his search. 

How in the hell were they expecting him to find one out of potentially thousands protected weapons trading deals on an unfamiliar server in less than an hour? 

He wandered listlessly out of the men’s restroom, out of the hotel, and out through crowds of similarly mindless pedestrians, madly scrolling and clicking through the empty phone memory over and over again. Even taking the offensive brick apart didn't give him anything new, but he still put it back together and tried again, until finally there was nothing for it but to hail a cab to get to his interview. 

They were expecting him at Hammer Tech. At the mention of his name, a young secretary eagerly got to his feet and, armed with a medley of keys, escorted Tony away from the reception desk, up the elevators, and through a twisting corridor of private offices and conference rooms. 

“Here we are, Mr. Stark,” the young secretary announced as he pushed the conference room door open and stepped back to allow Tony in. “Your instructions are in the white envelope beside the computer. Ms. Buckman advises all candidates to concentrate on only one project in the time provided. The hiring committee, including Mr. Hammer, will review your design or modifications before meeting with you again at 12pm, noon.” 

Tony only nodded in acknowledgement as he walked in and got settled on the far side of the conference table. The room was spacious and well-positioned for soothing early-morning natural light, if lacking in decorative touches. But it wasn’t so much the ergonomic chairs or the sleek frosted glass of the conference table that Tony noticed; instead, he surreptitiously counted two security cameras and took care to position himself when he sat down to move his notepad to a place where it would remain obscured to their view. The laptop computer buzzed patiently on the table in front of him, and to the side sat a small stack of four green folders and one white envelope. 

His instructions in the envelope informed him of his task ahead of their interview: to either produce a weaponized prototype suitable for the US military, or to offer modifications to any of the four current Hammer Tech designs presented in the green folders. 

Finding no hidden message or clue in the paperwork provided, Tony swept the folders aside and turned his full attention to the computer and to the delicate matter of unraveling the intranet security where Hammer kept his secrets. 

Except the damn rudimentary system did not deserve his full attention. Ten minutes in he had located and scrolled through every damn speck of lazy mediocrity on Hammer’s personal server, and with the basic Russian he picked up through interpreting Ty’s fake intelligence files weeks ago he narrowed his results of suspicious files down to two. 

First he found a folder of orderly files detailing the amounts, accounts, and dates of thousands of unique transactions. Easily found, easily identified, and easily a match for his assignment. But despite the quantity of transactions listed, and despite the heavy (albeit outdated) encryptions protecting it, it all could not account for the enormous size of the data files. 

It did not take him too long to uncover and pull together the missing pieces. Hidden within the endless accounting ledgers, he found something entirely unexpected. 

*** 

“Holy _shit,_ ” Peter gaped at the live feed of Tony in the conference room, courtesy of Hammer’s security system. As one, Clint and Steve side-eyed the kid, and Peter could not have stumbled to an apology faster. “Oh, fu—I’m sorry Agent Stark, Agent Barton! It won’t happen—I just—you know how long? That was _amazing!_ ” 

“He is,” Steve agreed, smirking. Beside him, Barton rolled his eyes. 

“That took us a whole day in the basement,” Peter explained with palpable admiration, “six hours and two analysts!” 

“I don’t remember this part,” Clint interrupted with a frown, and he threw a copy of the report at Steve to wipe the smirk off his face while he thumbed through his own copy. “Where’s this folder in the report?” 

“What folder?” Peter asked, squinting back at the screen mirroring Tony’s laptop monitor. When he realized that the new folder Tony was currently exploring on the screen only contained 23 files, he, too, frowned in confusion. “Uh.” 

“What do you mean, uh?” Clint demanded. “What’s _uh?_ ” 

“I’ve never seen this before, sir,” Peter said slowly, his thoughts divided between what Tony was doing on the screen and why he might have overlooked this. “Those are media files. Videos, I think. Whatever they are, we didn’t see any media files.” 

But Tony had yet to click one of them open; instead, he was typing commands and code in various windows at a speed that neither Steve nor Clint could follow, and they alternated between peering at the screens and at Peter, hoping for understanding to click into place. 

Eventually, Steve had enough. “What’s he doing?” 

“He is in their security mainframe,” Peter translated slowly, having a hard time following all windows Tony was working through at the same time. “You don’t—like, he’s—I mean, it’s hard to keep up, you know? But I think he’s—he’s,” Peter trailed off then, and his look of amazement slowly flickered into horror. “Uh, Agents?” he whispered slowly, “okay, so, don’t panic or, like, move.” 

“Spit it out,” Steve growled, and Clint, one seat farther removed from Peter, could only grunt in agreement. 

“He’s _here_ ,” Peter whispered. 

“He’s _what_ —” 

Steve dropped to the floor and rolled into a ball under the desk, squarely out of sight. Clint would have laughed at how fast the old man moved, had their monitors not all cut to black at the same time, only to then flicker back to life with different series of footage. 

Gone was the mirroring view of Tony’s laptop; gone were the four different surveillance cameras in the conference room, the hallway, and Hammer’s private office. 

On one monitor, Clint and Peter watched the live surveillance footage of themselves. On another, they observed Tony whittle away the remaining handful of minutes in his allotted interview allowance by bleeding red ink all over the patented Hammer originals, whistling happily to himself as he criticised every fault and flaw in their designs. 

And on the three remaining monitors, twenty-three separate films of explicit pornography streamed on rotation, the dissonance of their unrealistically exalted moans, forced delight, and the rhythm of lewd, slapping flesh turned up to maximum volume in the office Steve and Clint had commandeered for their purposes in the SHIELD basement. 

“Turn that down!” Clint yelled over the noise, desperately scanning the unfamiliar console for a conveniently marked MUTE button. Beside him, Peter scrambled to regain some control over their systems. 

He managed to kill the audio just as Coulson threw the door open and stomped in with the cavalry. “What is the meaning of this,” he demanded with the type of restrained discontent that made Clint wonder if hiding under the desk wasn’t in fact the best response after all. 

“Sir,” Steve said from under the console, still reluctant to show his face. “I can explain everything.” 

Unable to interrupt or disconnect the feed in time, Peter, Clint, and Coulson all watched as Tony finished humiliating the subpar Hammer Tech designs, then rose from the conference table promptly at the end of his hour and, blowing four kisses directly into the camera, strode out of the office. 

“I know this looks bad,” Clint cautiously tried to mediate Coulson’s disapproval. “ _Really_ bad. But, uh, would you believe we’re making progress on the Raza case?” 

Except the pornography that continued to stream across the majority of screens were less than supportive of his case, and the twitch in Coulson’s set jaw was categorically unimpressed. 

Before any more words could be said, the silence that Peter had wrestled in their favor was splintered yet again, this time by the base drums leading to Cakes da Killa’s snappy accusation that _he only want me for my goodie goodies._

Recognizing the song and knowing it would only be getting worse in the foreseeable future, Steve closed his eyes and slunk back farther under the console, slipping into the shadows and out of sight. 

*** 

“I’m sorry, rewind, I must have had dozed off,” Tony insisted and gave Rhodey a flat look over his sunglasses. “If anything, you’re _my_ wingman, sweatpea.” 

“Yeah, between the two of us _you_ are first choice to pilot a Hornet,” Rhodey deadpanned. “Just open the damn door, Tony.” 

“But why?” Tony frowned, though he dug the keys out of his pocket to do just that. “If it’s my present, shouldn’t _I_ get to fly it? Isn’t that the point of _my_ birthday present, that _I_ get the present?” 

“I don’t know, Tony,” Rhodey wondered out loud as Tony finally got the door open and led them into the house. “How did it go last time you went supersonic?” 

“Sometimes you gotta soar before you can fly, Count Chocula,” Tony started to say, but stopped suddenly inside the doorway, sniffing the air suspiciously. “Do you smell that?” 

Behind him, Rhodey inhaled the scent of whiskey glazed ham and groaned with unadulterated appreciation. “What is that, Christmas?” 

“Danger, Will Robinson,” Tony warned him quietly, toeing his shoes off and leading them in the hunt for what he now instinctively knew could only be a profoundly upset Steve. They found him in the sitting room, planted in the armchair wearing a terrycloth robe, a gallon of city baked ham in his lap, and digging for salvation in a pint of Ben  & Jerry’s. “Hi, honey. I’m home.” 

Steve blinked up at them slowly, blushing a fierce red at the sudden and unexpected company. Eventually, it was with forced dignity that he removed the gumbo spoon from his mouth and swallowed his bite with care. “You’re home. Early.” 

“Rough day?” 

“I should go,” Rhodey offered, clapping Tony on the shoulder before he turned to go. “Call me Tuesday, Tony. You got that?” 

“But I’ll see you Sunday for the game,” Tony called back, earning himself a cross look in return. “What, you think I’m gonna miss Gina’s first game?” 

“Tony, you got yourself thrown out last year,” Rhodey reminded him. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” 

“It’s Little League! That was months ago, who’s gonna remember that—that,” Tony waved him off, then threw a thumb over his shoulder in Steve’s direction. “—You know what? Don’t argue with me, or I’ll bring Steve. He’s infinitely more embarrassing.” 

“It’s true,” Steve chimed in in agreement from the couch. 

Rhodey looked from one to the other as he considered his chances in this argument. Eventually, he settled. “Give me some of that ham to go, and I’ll save you both seats.” 

“Blue tupperware in the fridge, left side, second shelf,” Steve supplied without missing a beat. “Help yourself.” 

“See you on Sunday!” Tony called all too sweetly, waving obnoxiously until Rhodey turned down the hall and out of sight. Still aware of his presence in the house, Tony made his way to the armchair, shrugging his jacket off and tossing it over the chaise as he went. “How bad?” he asked quietly, perching on the armrest and gently combing his fingers through Steve’s hair. 

“Bad,” Steve muttered and leaned into Tony’s touch for comfort without reservation, soon even giving in and stuffing another giant spoonful of the Americone Dream in his mouth. “‘eally ba’.” 

Once they heard the front door close behind Rhodey, Tony heaved a sigh and picked up the bucket of ham to free up the place of honor in Steve’s lap, then promptly slid off the armrest to claim it for himself. Comfortably settled, he tore a chunk off the baked ham and tried a bite. “Damn, Steve,” he moaned as he chewed, slowly, savoring the aroma and every flavor on his tongue. “You outdid yourself.” 

“Used all the bourbon,” Steve mumbled around the ice cream in his mouth. 

“I’m sorry, what?” Tony choked, suddenly breathless. “You fini—my 23 year old, four hundred dollar Pappy Van Winkle—” 

Steve nearly swallowed his spoon and spit it out immediately. “ _—Four hundred dollars!_ ” 

Tony squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, then with deliberate calm said, “Alright, not important right now.” He paused then, giving them a chance to settle before he tried again. “Take two: Tell me about your day, babe.” 

“Project I was working on fell through,” Steve sighed into his Ben & Jerry’s. “My damn fault. Let Barton down, let the whole team down. Got this new hire, Peter, on probation. The director is pissed.” 

Tony stared at him in disbelief, only remembering to breathe again when the silence became too noticeable. “How— _how_ is that possible, what happened? You’re in a museum, what could be—” 

“I can’t,” Steve started to say, but then quieted to try again. “I don’t even know where it started to go wrong. The Tokyo collaboration, it’s… I messed up, Tony. I should have been paying more attention.” 

Tony dumped the bucket of ham on the floor and shifted closer, wrapping his arms around Steve and pressing a lingering kiss to his temple. “Hey, no,” he said quietly, trying to draw Steve from his thoughts. “You’ll figure this out, babe. Anyone who’s heard you talk about the ‘40s and the War knows you care—about the people, their sacrifices. Their courage. Their voices are safe with you. You just have to do what you’ve always done: face it, learn from it, and move on.” 

Steve closed his eyes, looking pained to even talk about it. “You don’t even know what I did, Tony.” 

“I don’t care,” he shrugged, but then at least humored him. “Did you kill anyone?” 

With a wry grin and a helpless little shrug, Steve casually confessed, “Not since last Tuesday.” 

Tony barked a laugh, smacking him upside the head. “Fuck you,” he snickered, “you’re missing the point. The point—the point is, there’re only a few mistakes that are unforgivable. Everything else you can either fix or walk away from. Either way, we’ll get through it.” 

“We,” Steve repeated, almost a question but not quite so. 

“We,” Tony confirmed, bowing his head and touching his forehead to Steve’s. “Like you always say: together.” 

“Together,” Steve softly agreed and let his eyes shut. Slowly, a small smile spread on his lips, and little by little, as long silent minutes passed around them, Tony could feel Steve relaxing against him, finding his center, finding peace in the silence as they breathed together again. 

In the end, Steve took a deep breath and straightened up, picking his head up to look Tony in the eye, almost shy again with his affection. At a loss for words, he cleared his throat and glanced down at the nearly-finished pint in his hand. There were still some last spoonfuls of softened Americone Dream in there, and he held it up a little sheepishly to Tony, rattling it until the spoon stuck out in his direction. “Wanna help me finish it?” 

Whether he wanted some or not, Tony accepted his offer with a grin, scraping a spoonful out of the carton Steve held for him and ate it without question. 

“How was your day? Was Jim alright this morning?” 

“Hm? Oh, yeah—car trouble,” Tony lied smoothly, then steered the conversation elsewhere. “We went to the Mandarin, spent the whole day there. I totally beat Rhodey at hoops—it was awesome! Don’t believe him—” 

“—if he says he let you win,” Steve laughed. “Slander, naturally.” 

“Naturally,” Tony echoed, pleased, and picked up the spoon again to dredge up some more ice cream. “But, uh, speaking of naturally, or not-naturally—and yes, worst segue ever,” he said around the spoon then, almost an afterthought, “don’t ask me how, it’s weird enough as it is, but I saw this guy’s porn collection this morning.” 

“Oh yeah, cause that happens to me every week,” Steve deadpanned, if a little uncomfortably. “What about it? Are you alright?” 

“Well, I don’t know, it wasn’t—it wasn’t harassment, I’m fine, just—regret? Like I should’ve said something to someone,” Tony rambled in a rush, frowning at the memory. “Something about it gave me the creeps. Little things, like no camera movement, you know? It made me want to report him, but—is that even a crime? 911, this guy’s got suspicious homemade porn. Hell, that’d be FBI jurisdiction, wouldn’t it? The Internet? Do they even have a hotline?” 

“Hey—hey wait, wait a minute,” Steve interrupted after a stunned moment, “left field, Tony, I don’t follow. Why would you want to report him?” 

“Something about it just looked wrong. Obviously amateur, no doubt, the camera didn’t zoom in on anything—no fake smiles, no dick action, nothing—and every film was in the same classic ‘middle-class America’ classroom, it was so weird—maps and room decorations and homework assignments; same angle of the room every time. Different girls every time, right, that’s normal, and the same group of guys. Not a razor between them, by the way, hair everywhere,” he added, miming gagging up a hairball, “so disgusting.” 

“Alright, I clearly don’t watch enough pornography, because I still—I don’t understand,” Steve said slowly. “Why is the room important?” 

“Exactly!” Tony agreed with sudden energy, as if Steve had come to the perfect conclusion. “No, you _do_ get it: why is the room important? Who gets off on a room, right? The same classroom shit every time, twenty times over? Just maps and alphabet aerobics? Posting homework assignments is a step beyond the typical school-girl fantasy, it’s… I don’t know, I just wasn’t sure what to do. When is it just bad porn, and when is it a—a crime?” 

Steve watched him talk in wide-eyed amazement, never once interrupting. But as the fire in Tony’s words flickered out, his words incrementally snuffed out, Steve reached up to gently cradle his face, drawing him in for a chaste, lingering kiss. “I love you,” was the first thing he said, a private confession spoken on a shared breath, before he leaned back and looked up into Tony’s face again. “I love how you pay attention, how much you care. I have some friends in Metro PD you could talk to, if you want. I can give you their cards. It wouldn’t hurt to keep with you. You have good instincts, Tony. Don’t hesitate to trust them.” 

Tony observed him quietly, and despite the secrecy between them, despite his overwhelming ignorance of the shitstorm he had stumbled into, Steve’s words settled something within him. Uncertainty did not develop into competence, or even confidence, but rather it gave way to determination. He nodded then in agreement, in gratitude. A promise. 

“I won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, three quick things:  
> 1\. The book they are reading is The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie.  
> 2\. The Mandarin Oriental is an upscale hotel with a high-end spa, where Tony and Rhodey spent the day.  
> 3\. If you are curious and want to google/YouTube "Goodie Goodies," I feel obligated to say it is very explicit. Good, but explicit. 
> 
> Aaaand this was it, this was the point where I detract from the movie plot the most yet, I really hope you enjoyed it!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note: this chapter has graphic depictions of violence.
> 
> I hope you're enjoying it! Only one chapter to go :)

Steve had already left for work when the landline rang again on Friday morning. Tony’s assignment turned out to be an easy one: meet his contact through an intermediary at a fundraising gala for advancements in the medical sciences hosted at the Marquis, and make the drop. Straight-forward and easy, except how he had nothing to wear to a black-tie event, and how he didn’t know anything about his intermediary. Whoever this was, he or she would only recognize Tony by the expression, _a hero is the one who can hang on just one minute longer_ , because apparently someone somewhere must have thought it would be an easy phrase to weave into conversations with random strangers.

He really should have known it sounded too easy. Once he got into the swing of things he had even begun to enjoy his assignment, finding himself lingering on conversations with the exceptional doctors and engineers developing cutting-edge research that restored lives, saved families, and helped realize a better future.

He had been there nearly two hours when he saw Steve from across the room.

In the sea of tuxedos and evening gowns, Steve stood out in his sky-blue button-up and navy slacks, a vibrant beacon for Tony to follow in the sweeping waves of monochrome elegance. They waded through the crowd until they met somewhere in the middle.

“Tony, thank God I found you, I’ve been here—oh, wow,” Steve suddenly breathed in, taking a step back and treating himself to the vision of Tony in his tailored tuxedo from their wedding. “I—I had almost forgotten how good—how devastating—”

“—Table it, babe,” Tony grabbed him by the belt buckle and dragged him aside none too gently, pressing Steve up against the wall to put himself between Steve and the mingling do-gooders. “What are you doing here, Steve?”

“A secretary called me from your office, she said you needed me? Something about a hero?” Steve said, lowering his voice instinctively in response to the way Tony was behaving. “Tony, is everything okay?”

Tony growled under his breath and quickly spared a moment to cast his eyes around the crowds before looking back at Steve. “I promise, I will explain what I can as soon as we get home, but for right now, can—can you trust me?”

Steve’s brows climbed up his forehead and he couldn’t have looked more dubious if he had tried. “After seven years together you’re asking me if I can trust you?”

“Disco,” Tony said under his breath, a safeword that Steve obeyed in a heartbeat. “I need yes or no answers, Steve. Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you alright? Unharmed?”

Steve gave him a questioning look, but promptly answered, “Yes.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I… no?”

Tony stuttered momentarily, then could only roll his eyes at himself when he realized his mistake. “Sorry—did, uh, did they tell you something about what we do next?”

“Yes,” this time more firmly, and Tony nodded for him to elaborate. “She said something about a tray on the tenth floor, outside room 1014. She said to leave it on the covered plate on the tray, though… I’m not sure to what she was referring.”

“That’s fine, that’s great—you did great,” Tony said with a growing smile, freedom finally so near that he could practically taste it. “Come on, let’s finish this.”

Steve’s face said he wanted to know what, precisely, they were going to finish, but he remained silent, and when Tony took him by the hand and led him to the elevators he followed obediently. They rode the elevator hand in hand, though while Tony couldn’t look away from the climbing numbers of the elevator, Steve’s entire world had narrowed down to their joined hands. He observed them with a private smile, absently fondling Tony’s wedding band and watching the light gleaming off the channel of rubies wrapping around the center of the heavy gold band. 

It took him far too long to realize it was on the wrong hand.

“Tony,” he started to say, already frowning, “what’s going on?”

“Disco,” Tony said again, and again Steve was silenced. But his mouth was set in an firm, unhappy line as he continued watching their joined hands, worrying the wedding band on Tony’s right hand in impotent frustration until eventually Tony’s attention was torn from the floor display, but even then he only gave Steve an apologetic look.

The elevator doors had barely opened before Tony shot out into the corridor, pulling Steve along behind him by the hand. 

It all happened so fast.

They must have known Steve was a soldier, because they took him first. A dozen men in green and black uniforms swarmed from every direction, pistols and semi-automatic machine guns drawn, and before Tony knew what was happening, two of them had clubbed Steve so hard in the head, in the liver, and in the knees that even as Tony turned to see why Steve had pulled his hand away he could only watch his husband fall to his knees. Tony lunged forward to put his body between Steve and the four men crowding around him when someone grabbed him from behind and jerked him away in a chokehold, pressing the muzzle of a gun to his temple. Tony was distantly aware that the man barked some command or other in his ear, but all he could do was watch Steve bent over his battered middle with his hands behind his head until they dragged him away like some wretched animal, ordering Steve to stay down on his knees.

“He’s got nothing to do with this!” Tony yelled breathlessly, struggling against the arm around his throat. “You hear me? I’m the one you want!”

“Be quiet,” was all Steve told Tony before ignoring him entirely. With an unnatural calm, he turned his eyes up to one of their assailants. “Come on, guys. Let the hooker go, he’s not important.”

“Hooker—Damnit, Steve, just shut up and let me handle this!”

“Shut up, both of you!” one of the men yelled, and gestured to both of them. Another gun was pointed at Steve as someone stepped up behind him to shackle his arms behind his back in the heaviest pair of manacles Tony had ever seen, fettering his forearms together fully from his wrists to his elbows. “Take them both.”

They were dragged out of the room and down the fire-escape stairs at gunpoint, leading them right into the parking lot where two unmarked white vans were waiting with the cargo doors open.

“Listen,” Tony tried again, his words catching on his dry throat as he coughed and aggressively swallowed to recover from the chokehold. “You don’t understand, he’s—he’s nothing, you don’t need him. He works for a museum, really—”

The assailant in charge rounded on Tony and pistol-whipped him across the head to shut him up. “Finished?”

Tony heard more than saw the commotion Steve caused behind him in reaction to the strike, so for both their safety he stopped his protesting and spit a mouthful of blood at the asshole’s feet. “That was unnecessary.”

With Tony still at gunpoint, they threw Steve into the back of a van and chained him to the wall; once he was secure, they tossed Tony in after him almost as an afterthought before shutting the doors.

The van sped off in a squeal of tires, and Tony was jostled around the back until eventually he managed to crawl his way across to Steve where they silently looked each other over to confirm that the other was not seriously injured. Tony tugged at the chain and the manacles around Steve’s forearms, but he couldn’t find a seam or a space for any kind of key that he might have been able to exploit. Confused but satisfied that Steve at least seemed alright, Tony sat down with a huff beside him, leaning heavily against the van wall.

“Steve, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, hoarse with emotion. “I am so sorry, I’m going to do everything—”

But Steve interrupted him before he got too far, unable to stomach the regret in Tony’s voice. “Tony, no. This is not your fault.”

“All of it is my fault,” Tony confessed miserably, “I thought—they said you’d be kept out of it, they promised you’d be safe, I don’t—”

“Disco,” Steve said this time, and like his husband Tony dutifully bit his lip with the same immediacy and interrupted the inevitable ramble of regret from pouring out of him.

***

The van pulled up to where a G-5 jet was warming up outside a private hanger. The doors were thrown open, and one man climbed in to drag Tony out, and they kept him at gunpoint while four men climbed in to disconnect Steve’s manacles from the van and bring him out. As the two of them were led around the van, a sleek, black limousine pulled up beside them.

An enormous man climbed out of the driver’s seat and hurried to open the passenger door. Tony could only stare at the spectacle unfolding around him, drawn with a morbid sense of curiosity to the slender pair of ankles that first emerge from the limousine. Those graceful feet were wrapped in delicate heels and they delivered Léonide Lorraine, a breathtaking beauty even when mostly hidden in her long evening coat. She stalked leisurely over to them, covetous eyes on Steve and Steve alone.

“Hello, Steve,” she greeted with a wry smile, reaching to caress the straining outline of his bicep with a proprietary sweep of her fingertips.

“I wish I could say it was a pleasure to see you again,” he said with a sigh, looking all but bored.

Tony, however, blinked at their exchange, looking from one to the other. “You know her?” Lorraine spared him a glance then, acknowledging Tony’s presence for the first time. “Yes, hi: I’m here, too.”

“Steve,” Lorraine purred, her eyes roving across Tony’s body once before turning her attention back to Steve, likely having found Tony wanting. “Who’s your little friend?”

But Tony was allergic to being ignored, so he leaned into the small, intimate space between Steve and Lorraine and interrupted their conversation by answering the question himself. “I am Tony Stark. Steve, also Stark, is my husband. And _you_ are?”

But Léonide only made a delighted little sound of surprise, and swept her hands across Steve’s chest with an attractive little pout. “Oh, I see. And now it’s Stark, not Grant?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Steve answered calmly, still looking bored with this whole mess. Lorraine gave him no more in return than a smile, and as she turned away from them to saunter toward the plane, Steve and Tony were both urged to follow her onboard the jet with a series of guns digging into their ribs.

“Léonide, he’s just some company for the night I met at the hotel bar. Leave him out of this.”

“Would you just shut up!” Tony cried even as he was shoved down onto a plush couch in the private cabin next to Lorraine. Steve was brought around to a seat across the plane from them both, so he could see Lorraine and Tony but could not easily reach them. “Steve, just tell her the truth: you work at a museum, you have nothing to do with this. Listen,” he tried with Lorraine instead since Steve didn’t seem willing to cooperate, “he’s not a part of this, you have to believe me.”

“No, my dear,” Léonide smiled, cupping Tony’s face tenderly in one hand before leaning back comfortably in her own seat. “This man is a federal agent. He killed two of my colleagues the other night.”

“That’s not possible—we’ve been married for six years, I think I would’ve noticed—”

“Christ, shut up!” Steve growled. “Léonide, throw him out, I can’t take more of this. He’s just some delusional hooker who’s imprinted on me—”

“Imprinted, my ass!” Tony snapped back, jerking his wedding band off his finger and waving it in Steve’s face in his sudden anger. “If I was some random hooker, why would I bother to wear your name on my goddamn ring?”

Steve groaned and let his head fall back against the headrest of his seat, squeezing his eyes shut in frustration. With a bright smile on her face, Léonide plucked the ring out of Tony’s hand to inspect the engraving.

“How sweet,” she murmured, “ _From Steve to Tony_. But how rude of me,” she added suddenly, mostly to Tony. “Would you like anything before take off?”

“Go to he—” Tony growled back at her, his eyes tracking his stolen wedding band so carefully that he never saw the stewardess walking up the aisle behind him with a needle. By the time he noticed the prick it was too late; he slumped forward before he could finish cursing her, landing face first in the sofa.

“He was telling the truth, wasn’t he?” Lorraine asked Steve then, her captive audience whose main motivation to remaining cooperative write the two guns still trained on Tony. “He really doesn’t know anything about you. How interesting.”

But Steve ignored her and her baiting, his attention instead split between watching his unconscious husband and counting his breaths to reassure himself of Tony’s state. She seemed to have realized his waning attention because she, too, fell silent.

Somewhere between counting Tony’s breaths and finding a comforting, steady pattern there, Steve was distantly aware of how the plane eventually took into the night sky and turned southward.

***

“Tasha!”

Natasha continued pulling the protective catsuit up over her tights, slipping her weapons into place as she went. “Please come in, Barton,” she drawled, “don’t let the locked door stop you.”

“I lost Stark,” he told her in a rush. “Steve isn’t answering my messages, even when I borrowed Coulson’s phone to call—he always answers Coulson’s calls, Nat, it’s like he respects him or something.”

“First of all, don’t ever steal Coulson’s phone,” Natasha said calmly, “second: Steve’s a big boy, he can take care of himself. He’s probably kissing Tony’s feet for forgiveness as we speak.”

“I thought so too, except with less gross,” Clint perched next to her and held up his phone so she could see, “so I checked and Tony’s tracker is somewhere over Florida right now.”

Natasha glanced at the screen to confirm Clint was right before engaging with his worrying any further. But sure enough, Tony was jetting across Florida air space with unusual speed. “That is suspicious.”

“I’d bet the farm Stark is with him,” Clint said with a frown, and he swiped through his phone in search of something. “Last night he said Tony inspired some breakthrough with the porn we discovered in Raza’s files. He thinks they’re communicating through the videos.”

Natasha smirked and arched an eyebrow in an sardonic expression of amusement. “What, they’re grunting in morse code?” 

Clint finally pulled up the right thread of messages and handed the phone to her. “No, read it: he thinks they’re using the room: the classroom maps, the clock on the wall, the reading exercises on the board—”

She thought about it in silence for some time, swiped back to the tracking app that still insisted that Tony was somewhere over Florida, then back to Steve’s texts about hidden communications.

“Airport codes,” she said quietly. “Maybe. They’re easy to hide, not easily recognizable—start with Miami, Key West, and Havana. If the tracker moves past Havana, start with Belmopan; the Secretary of State is in Belize.”

“That could work, but what pattern are we looking for—are they targets, directions; which is which? ” Clint caught the phone as she tossed it back to him, and he was halfway through the door when he realized Natasha wasn’t following. “Hey, you coming or what?”

“I’ve got my own hot mess to deal with,” she told him, standing up to zip up the last slip of her suit. “So long as they don’t find the tracker in his watch, you should be fine.”

“But I’m suspended, I can’t do shit without you right now—”

She gave him an unimpressed look that reminded him of just how much shit she knew he was good for, but then showed a sliver of mercy. “If you need to haul ass, I’d call Rhodes. He’s in town; he can fly.”

“As if! He’d stall with paperwork; he’s an Air Force bureaucrat.” 

“And Tony’s best friend.”

***

The helicopter thundered over the black Caribbean water in the dead of night. A rusty old freighter was docked at a half-crumbling pier, and they both rattled ominously in the water as the nimble chopper neared its landing pad. Not far from the pier loomed a dilapidated three-story warehouse, its corrugated metal frame bent and twisted in places where years of untold history had ravaged its structure. In the discomforting darkness of the occupied island only floodlights within the old warehouse offset the night, casting ghostly shapes over the mangroves and palm trees filling in the cracks and crevices of the abandoned dock. But old and craggly as the warehouse seemed, its walls barely quivered as the helicopter landed nearby, and dozens of heavily armed soldiers cheered the delivery of their hostages.

Only Raza observed it all in silence, waiting scant yards from the landing pad.

The front passenger door opened and first revealed Lorraine, composed and beautiful despite the turbulence of the helicopter ride. As she walked up to stand beside Raza, the sliding rear doors were thrown open and several men ran forward to drag their two hooded captives out. Tony was brought out first, his hands uncuffed but useless at his sides. He was still a little groggy and unsure on his feet from the drugs, and he stumbled over his feet more than once as he was manhandled across to where Raza waited. The men who tried to lead Steve out by the arm, however, were shit out of luck: even with the dark hood over his head, Steve climbed out of the helicopter himself and followed the sound of Tony’s footsteps without hesitation, closing the distance between them with long, confident strides.

“Who do we have here?” Steve heard an uncomfortably familiar voice wonder, and moments later his suspicions were confirmed when Raza jerked the hood up over his head. “Ah, yes. I was expecting you. But this,” Raza mused, moving on to Tony and pulling his hood off. “Who is this?”

“His husband,” Lorraine answered with a syrupy leer at Steve.

Raza barked a laugh of disbelief. “The American hero is a sodomite? Well,” he added with a slow, lecherous smile, grabbing Tony’s face in one hand and turning him to study his profile. In his drug-induced anxiety, Tony stumbled as far back as he could go, breathing hard as he struggled to jerk his head free, but between Raza’s vice grip and the man restraining him from behind with a gun digging into his ribs, he had little leverage and nowhere to go.

Beside him, Steve looked aggravated but powerless to do anything but watch: nothing he could have done would be fast enough to cheat the gun pressed against Tony’s body. To that result Raza was anything but blind.

“A husband is good,” Raza decided, patting Tony’s cheek cheerfully before stepping back. He gestured to the men clustered around the Starks, then turned on his heel to lead the way into the warehouse. “Bring them inside.”

Raza led the entourage into the warehouse where four giant stone figures dominated the space. The stone figures were cracked and obscured by centuries, but they were unmistakably warriors on horseback; on one the arms were missing and on another a leg, but the central bulk of their horses and the warriors remained.

“Incredible, aren’t they?” Lorraine wondered wistfully, walking up to one of the statues to caress its broad flank, not unlike how she had first touched Steve that evening. “They are warrior figures from the Persian Empire of Darius the First, around 500 BC. I call them _The Four Horsemen_. They are the only specimens of their kind: absolutely priceless.”

A man with a jackhammer stepped up to her side, an expected presence if her expression was sincere. After a final look at the ancient statues she shrugged off their discovery easily, and signaled to him. The man wasted no time blasting into the side of one of the statues, destroying it. Stone fragments cracked and fell away, revealing a bright metal container inside a tidy cavity cut into a Warrior’s body.

Four men rushed forward to lift it out of the statue, and with great care they transported the six-foot long coffin-like box to the ground near Raza and his prisoners. A respectful silence fell over the crowd. Raza stepped up to the box, his eyes bright with emotion in his otherwise cold face. After a reverent moment Raza ordered men to open it, and his soldiers hurried to release the latches of the lid and lift it aside. 

Inside lay a gleaming five-foot long conical metal object. Raza signaled to Steve to step closer to take a look. “Do you know what this is?”

“Can I have a clue?” Steve frowned, eyeing the object suspiciously. “This could be water-heater for all I know.”

With an impatient flick of his wrist, Raza signaled for Tony; the man holding him at gunpoint reacted at once, viciously shoving Tony forward to Raza’s waiting grasp. Raza caught him by the hair and dragged him in close, bending him backwards to reveal his vulnerable throat to a hunting knife, letting the blade dig into Tony's skin with enough force to draw blood.

Without taking his eyes off of Steve, Raza angled Tony’s head in such a way that he could speak directly against Tony’s ear, his breath wet and heavy against Tony’s cheek. “Do you know why you have been brought here?”

Tony screwed his eyes shut, visibly struggling against his consuming panic and trying to ignore the knife scraping against his throat. “N—no.”

“You are here so that this man can verify to the world that the Ten Rings is now a nuclear power.”

“How is Steve supposed to do that,” Tony complained frantically. “Please, there’s been a misunderstanding—he works for a museum for fuck’s sake, he wouldn’t recognize it unless it was a relic and those aren’t even worth the effort—just let him go—”

“For your sake, I hope you are wrong,” Raza rasped into his ear, “because if you’re right, the last thing you see will be your blood spraying across his face.”

Steve stepped forward with a grim expression, looking from Tony to Raza. “This is a Soviet MIRV-six,” he told Raza and his men in Arabic. “It comes from an SS-22N launch vehicle. The warhead contains 14.5 kilos of enriched uranium, with a plutonium trigger. The nominal yield is 10 kilotons. Release him,” he said at last in English. “Release him and I will cooperate.”

With those six words, Tony ceased to exist for Raza. The knife was removed from his throat and he was released with a shove that had him stumbling forward on unsure knees. Around Steve and Tony the soldiers were ordered into a frenzy of activity, liberating weapons crates from the rest of the Warriors and assembling weapons in improvised stations around the warehouse. But between them, the world grew numb.

“Damnit, Tony. What can I say?” Steve started hesitantly before finally offering a sheepish shrug and a vague explanation. “I’m a spy.”

Tony stared at him for a long time. When he finally moved it was to step closer, as if by coming closer he would find a sign that Steve had only been lying for the benefit of the terrorist.

“A spy?” he stuttered, breathless, but as Steve was about to answer Tony hauled off and slugged him square in the jaw, punching him with such force that Steve nearly lost his footing.

“You _bastard!_ ” he snarled in a sudden rage, struggling against two soldiers who had rushed forward to keep him from attacking Steve again. “You lying piece of shit—how could you!”

“Sweetheart, I’m sorry—” Steve tried, but Tony had no interest in hearing his apology.

“—Don’t you _ever_ call me sweetheart!” he snapped, unshed tears bright in his eyes. “You asshole—you will never speak to me again!”

“Tony!”

Some feet away, Lorraine laughed heartily. “Here you go, dear,” she cooed at Tony, walking over and offering him a tissue. “Ladies never cry in public.”

“Raza!” a man yelled over the noise of scurrying activity. “Raza, look at this. They carry with them a transmitter.”

A silence fell over the crowd again as all eyes turned to Steve and Tony. With two quick words a handful of men rushed forward to search them from head to toe for trackers, until finally someone pulled Tony’s watch off and spotted a little transmitter tucked into the battery cavity. He threw the watch to the ground and crushed it under his heel. 

Tony stared at the shattered pieces of his watch until realization finally dawned. “You _bugged me?_ ” 

“I can explain, Tony, it's not what you think,” Steve tried again, but Tony was quickly putting the pieces together. 

“It was you,” he hissed, lips curling back over his teeth in a snarl. “It was all you. You followed me to Ty—you self-righteous shit, you fucking kidnapped me, you _interrogated_ me. You made me believe I would fucking lose you!”

“I panicked! I’m sorry, Tony, but I thought I was losing you, I thought you were cheating—”

“Cheating!” Tony cried, almost hysterical. “How! Why would you even care—is this even a legal marriage? It would save me a metric ton in legal fees if this is all a sham, that’s—oh my god,” he suddenly muttered, another piece of the puzzle clicking into place. “Christ, are you even gay? I mean, actually, that would answer so many questions, let me tell you.”

Steve blinked at him, and somehow the explosive mess of valid and outrageous accusations had left him reeling. “Wait, what's that supposed to mean?”

To that Tony only scowled in bitter disgust and looked away. “Forget it,” he said quietly, deflated. He jerked his arms out of the two men’s grasp in an effort to shrug them off. “Are you blind? It's over, let go. He isn't worth it.”

“That’s enough!” Raza’s words commanded absolute silence warehouse. “Take them to Samir.”

The gun dug into Tony’s ribs again to shepherd him off, and he couldn’t help a groan of frustration. “Fuck—could you like, cool it with the gun there, Iago? I’m starting to bruise. I know this is an island, I know you could kill me, and I’m sure your dick isn’t embarrassing, so could you just, I don’t know, act your fucking age and use your words or fucking point?”

The man glowered at Tony with a hateful expression, but with one glance back at Steve seemed to think better of whatever he had in mind. Instead he shoved Tony ahead of him, leading him out of the warehouse with a hand on Tony’s shoulder instead. Although a small contingent of armed men followed him, Steve needed little else to lead him out in the right direction. 

They were taken out of the warehouse, past the docks, and out to a filthy, crumbling cinderblock building on the other side of the warehouse. A few bare bulbs provided light in the shack, swaying every so often in the ocean breeze, casting dark, angular shadows across the steel examination table, the metal chairs, and the small number of steel tables littering the space. 

The first guard made quick work of cuffing Tony to a metal chair bolted into the side of the wall, and he waited with a gun pressed against Tony’s temple while the handful of men following Steve led him directly to the examination table. It took two men to release the manacles restraining his arms, not that Steve seemed to notice his freedom; he was a passive, obedient prisoner until one of the soldiers gave him a command Tony could not understand, when suddenly his hands turned into straining fists at his sides and Tony braced himself for the inevitable fight. 

But then his gaze turned to Tony again, and that was all Steve needed to shake his fists out. Reassured of whatever he needed to know, Steve turned to look blindly ahead at some point on the far wall and efficiently unbuttoned his shirt, tugged it off his shoulders and threw it away against a wall. 

“Steve?” Tony asked before he could remind himself of how angry he was, because surely this was unusual; surely terrorists didn’t care if your shirt was on or off. He tried to get up, only to be reminded of his handcuffs, and from above him the man with his finger on the trigger tsked in disapproval. 

“It’s alright, Tony,” Steve assured him before he climbed up on the examination table and laid back, where he was quickly shackled to the metal frame of the table with his palms turned up to the ceiling. 

Tony rolled his eyes at the blatant lie, but before he could tell Steve just how little he appreciated the patronizing, a small, leathery old man entered the room with a small, leathery old briefcase. He hoisted his briefcase up onto a table next to where Steve lay and opened it in such a way that Tony could easily see the crooked medical instruments, needle-probes, drills, and saw-blade Dremel tools. 

Lorraine sauntered into the room and walked directly to Tony’s corner, only briefly lingering beside the examination table to look her fill. She followed his gaze to the open briefcase, and a smile curled her lips. “You’ve been a nosy boy, I see. So can you guess what Samir’s specialty is?”

Tony glared up at her. “I don’t know. Oral hygiene?” 

“Not exactly,” Lorraine purred, drawing her fingers through Tony’s hair not unlike how she might have pet a cat. “Samir is going to ask Steve here a few questions. We’re not sure what he is, or who he works for, and that just won’t do. But don’t worry,” she added, ruffling his hair, “Samir is a consummate professional, absolutely first class. It will be interesting to see how long a man like Steve can last, but I have every faith in Samir’s efficient work.”

While she talked, Samir stuck Steve in both arms and set about connecting these needles to a series of blood bags hung up on two racks. As the first bags started to fill up, Samir stuck him a third time, this time with a smaller needle attached to a pair of green IV fluids. “This will help,” he promised Steve, taping up the three needles to keep them in place on his arms. “I will return when the bags are filled and the first dose has taken effect.”

“Looking forward to it,” Steve deadpanned, and with that Samir and the guards filed out of the shack. Léonide was the only one who lingered on her way out, and this time she invited herself to trace her finger down across his chest and his abs. 

“It’s such a shame you’re on the wrong side,” she mused, drawing nails across his abs and marveling at how quickly the red lines faded. 

But Steve seemed unbothered by the groping, and instead he watched her with a sincerely confused expression. “Why are you helping these raving lunatics?”

“Because they are very well-funded raving lunatics, and I’m getting a lot of money,” she answered with a smile. “What, you thought I was in it for the cause? I don’t care what country is at the top of the food chain; Rome was at the top once, and even they fell. What matters is living well, and living well takes money.”

“Damn, you are one damaged bitch,” Tony said with a wry frown. “What happened? Not enough hugs from daddy dearest?”

She leered at Tony then, still freely caressing Steve’s body. “Did you tell him about us, Steve?” 

“There is no us, you psychotic moll,” Steve growled, his words beginning to sound slightly slurred. 

“Aw baby,” she cooed softly, bringing her hand up to cup his jaw. “You would say that in front of him, wouldn’t you? You can lie to him, he’s used to it. Tell him you never desired my body; tell him you don’t know how I taste.”

She draped herself over Steve then and kissed him full on the lips, a soft, passionate moan barely muffled between them. When she finally pulled away they were both breathless, and she turned to see Tony’s reaction, visibly savoring his silent, trembling indignation. 

“Thanks for everything, Steve,” she said softly, rubbing one of his flexing biceps affectionately. “It was great while it lasted.”

With a parting squeeze, Léonide stepped away from the examination table and made her way to a crate of munitions by the door. After a brief moment of searching, she came up with a hand-grenade, which she carried with her back to where Tony sat in silence. She leaned in close and placed the grenade between his knees, squeezing them together around it to press the spoon against the grenade. When she straightened back up, she had taken the pin with her. 

“Now, just remember to keep your knees together, and you’ll be fine.”

“I get the feeling you’re not speaking from experience here,” Tony noted casually, earning himself a stinging slap in the face for his effort. 

Lorraine eyed the grenade Tony managed to hold onto by his knees despite the slap, and she hummed with satisfaction, patting his reddening cheek affectionately. “Good boy.”

“Tony, are you alright?” Steve called across the room as soon as Lorraine left the shack, his words wobbly and slurred despite his best effort. “How badly did she hurt you?”

“What’s wrong, Steve?” asked Tony with feigned concern, “don’t like seeing your ex’s fighting?”

Steve’s dopey expression pulled downward into an unhappy frown. “There was nothing, Tony. I swear.”

“Whatever,” Tony said half-heartedly, then instead asked, “Steve, what are they doing to you?”

“Well, it feels like drugs,” Steve drawled empathically, his tongue sounding heavy in his mouth. “Which is… new. I think they’re distracting my body from recovery by drawing buckets of blood so they can adminis—admi—give me sodium amytal, or some other truth agent.” 

Tony blinked at him in bewilderment, then finally settled on asking the most important question first: “It can make you tell the truth?”

“Think so,” Steve would have shrugged if he could move. “Ask me something I’d typically lie about.”

“Uh,” Tony stalled at first, then finally asked, “are we going to die?”

“Oh yeah,” Steve laughed, his fists pumping even faster at his sides. “No doubt about it.”

“...I’d say it’s working,” Tony noted dryly, his gaze dropping to the grenade as an itch started to bother him around his knee. “Why do they have to drain you of blood to get it to work? Is that normal?”

“Not really, but it’s not like I’m normal either,” Steve all but shrugged again. “I don’t know how they found out about the serum, though.”

“But you’re…” Tony stammered, doing his math over and over again as if he really could not believe he was right. “Steve, that’s five bags of blood you’ve filled. Even with your size you should only have about 3 pints left, that’s—Steve, that’s fatal.”

“Oh cool, they’re full? About time,” he smiled, his whole posture relaxing. As blood loss became less critical of an issue, he laid back and let the serum handle the drugs. “Hey Tony? You know I didn’t have an affair with that Barbie, right?”

“If you say so, you probably believe it,” Tony muttered, unconvinced. “But you’re a spy. Does it even count as an affair if it’s for the job?”

“I don’t take those assignments, Tony,” Steve confessed with a sigh. “I’ve had to kiss other people, but not more.”

Tony’s expression twisted briefly, and he eyed the now-empty bags of truth agent critically before finally answering. “And what about her?”

“She’s really a looker, isn’t she?” Steve grinned. 

Tony grit his teeth, biting out his words in a rush. “God, it’s like herding turtles with you—did you fuck her, Steve?” 

“No, absolutely not,” Steve promised, but when the silence stretched on for too long, he quietly added, “but I kinda wanted to, though.”

Tony bit back a few choice words, fully aware of how his flirtation with Ty was a big factor in their current predicament. He took a big sigh and tried to move on. “How long have you been a spy, Steve?”

“Eighteen years,” Steve answered easily, and slowly he started flexing his arms again, testing the strength of the metal shackles around his forearms. 

“Wait,” Tony said slowly, stunned. “Steve, if you’re ..if you’re thirty-two, how—you can’t have started when you were fourteen—”

Steve chuckled at something Tony had said, though Tony was hard pressed to find anything funny about anything he had said. But before he could demand more answers, Samir returned to the shack, two guards in tow. 

“Laughing on death’s doorstep,” he cheered at the irony, “the drugs must have worked very well!”

“Well, they sure do feel great,” Steve grinned, looking more drunk than Tony had ever seen him. 

“That is welcome news,” said Samir and checked Steve’s eyes and his pulse. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me before we get started?”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve answered agreeably. “You should know that I will be killing you soon.”

Samir laughed, ambling over to his suitcase to start preparing his instruments. “I see. How will you be doing that?”

“I thought I’d break your neck, then use you as a human shield,” Steve told him, “then I’ll use two of those little knives in your suitcase to kill the guards, and then I’ll take their guns.”

“Efficient,” Samir humored Steve with his approval. “But I thought you did not like to kill any persons. This sounds very violent.”

“I don’t,” Steve agreed with a smile that was all teeth. “You shouldn’t have threatened my husband.” 

Samir walked over to him with a long, steel-needle probe, and gave him a long-suffering smile. “Ah, yes. But what makes you think you can do all that to avenge him?”

“‘Cause I’m firing on all cylinders again, Doc,” Steve smirked. By the time Samir realized what that meant, Steve had pulled his arms free of his restraints and grabbed his torturer by the neck. With one quick twist he snapped the man’s neck and spun his body fully to shield himself from the guards, who both hesitated to shoot Samir long enough for Steve to grab two scalpels in his free hand and, one after another, throw them into the guards’ eyes, killing them instantly. Satisfied, he let go of Samir’s limp body and hauled himself up so he could pull the clamps around his ankles off, too. 

With unusual grace and surety for someone who just lost so much blood, Steve pushed off the examination table and grabbed all the weapons off the two dead guardsmen that he could find: three 9mm pistols between them, mostly loaded. He tucked them all into his belt, then made his way to Tony. 

“Hey, babe,” said Steve quietly, kneeling in front of him, “don’t move, okay?” 

Slowly and with great care he slipped his hands between Tony’s thighs, getting a grip on the grenade, and he slid his fingers slowly over the spoon to hold it in place. 

But then suddenly he stopped moving, and Tony’s blood ran cold in alarm once he realized Steve had frozen completely. “What is it?” Tony whispered unevenly, sitting absolutely still through sheer force of will. 

Steve slowly shook his head, almost in disbelief. “My God. You’ve got great legs, Tony.”

“You—Steve! Snap out of it!” he hissed urgently, trying to keep his voice down. “There’s a fucking grenade between my legs, Steve, don’t mess with me!”

Despite his dopey expression, Steve managed to lift the grenade out from between the tight grip of Tony’s knees, holding the spoon safely to keep it from going live. “Got it, babe.”

Finally able to relax, Tony’s head thumped back against the wall for a moment as relief washed over him. He barely moved as Steve single-handedly made quick work of his handcuffs and helped him up to his feet, but before Steve got on any further with their escape plan Tony grabbed at him. “Steve, wait. One more question.”

Steve looked at first like he wanted to hurry them along, but instead he gave Tony a quick nod to show he was listening. 

“Steve, do you...” Tony ducked his head as his words trailed off and failed him, then, quietly, he tried again. “Humor me here. Do you still love me?”

“Yes, Tony,” Steve answered with a soft smile, as if they were sharing a private joke. “I love you. I have always loved you, and I will always love you, for as long as you’ll have me.”

“Good,” Tony whispered on a long, shaky exhale, then quickly nodded to himself. “That’s good. Okay, so—put your shirt back on and let’s get out of here.”

“Damn,” Steve rumbled, gravitating closer to Tony until their noses bumped, his eyes drawn to Tony’s lips. “It really turns me on when you get bossy.”

Tony blinked at him slowly in disbelief. “Steve, you just lost five pints of blood, you can’t afford a hard-on right now. Get your head out of your ass and let’s go home.”

***

Together they crept out of the building and kept close to the shadows, Steve leading them carefully out of sight. Once they clear the room where they left Samir’s and the guards’ bodies and are fairly well-positioned behind a low wall, Tony grabbed Steve by the belt of his pants and tugged him back to a halt. 

“What’s wrong?” Steve asked, systematically scanning their immediate area again to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. 

“What did she mean when she said they didn’t know what you were,” Tony asked, apropos of nothing. “And then you said you weren’t normal—they’re related, aren’t they?”

“Uh,” Steve stammered eloquently. “It’s a long story, and I will tell you everything, but it’s—it’s a treatment from my time in the army—”

A sudden swell of noise and yelling from the cinderblock shack they had put behind them interrupted them, and Steve shifted gears at once. “Time to move. Stay close!”

Steve lobbed the grenade in the direction of the cinderblock shack, then grabbed Tony’s hand and took off in a sprint for cover in the mangrove swamp. A series of enormous spotlights shattered the night, and before long they were found. Two nearby soldiers sprinted around the corner and opened fire, tearing into the night with their automatic weapons just as Steve and Tony reached a cluster of palm trees. The trunks exploded around them with bullets as they ran through the darkness. 

A brief silence followed and Steve quickly pulled Tony behind him in a crouch, then gestured for him to stay put. When their two attackers ran into the cluster of trees after them, presumably to finish the job, Steve lunged out of the shadows and grabbed one from behind, wrestling the rifle away from him and swinging it like a bat into the other, knocking his AK-47 down. The first soldier drew a knife and slashed at him, but Steve grabbed his knife arm and swung the blade into the other, giving it an extra push and twist to be sure the man was dead. Distantly, he heard more footfalls of soldiers approaching, and he made quick work of snapping the knife man’s neck, freeing up his hands and kicking up one of the AK’s so when the five soldiers came through into the clearing, he took them all down with two well-aimed bursts. 

Tony stumbled out of the shadows, all but tripping over his own feet as he took in the scene around him. His eyes skittered from one dead body to the next, until finally he turned to Steve with wide-eyed amazement. 

“You’re—” he stuttered, at a loss for words as he took in the sight Steve made in his ripped dress shirt, scanning the brush like some feral animal, scratched up from the knife and blood trailing down from his chest. “You—fuck, you’re bleeding!” Tony said in a rush as Steve’s injury snapped him out of his daze, and he hurried to see him. “Damnit, Steve, if I lose you to a swamp infection I’ll kill you myself—how bad is it? Fuck, fuck, fuck—how is this my life; this morning I was married to the Crypt Keeper, and now I’m married to fucking Rambo.”

“Captain America,” Steve corrected, smiling his most winning USO smile. “You married Captain America.”

“Let’s revisit that when I can suck your dick on behalf of a grateful nation,” Tony suggested in a desperate attempt at staying calm, though he was quickly growing increasingly frustrated by how he couldn’t find Steve’s wounds. “Are—Steve, where did he cut you?”

Steve gathered up Tony’s hands in a gentle but firm grip, and kissed his knuckles softly, trying to get Tony’s full attention. “Tony, this isn’t a joke. It was a shallow cut, I healed.”

“What isn’t a joke? You being a spy, you being a trained fucking killer, or you being Captain America?” Tony pulled at Steve’s grip, and gentle as it was, Steve wasn’t letting go. “One of these things is not like the other, Steve: Captain America is a fucking comic book hero.”

“And before that he was a soldier.” 

“And born in 1918,” Tony added, “you’d be a—a nonagenerian.”

“And—” several bursts of gunshots blasted around them, and instinctively Steve grabbed Tony and threw them both to the ground, covering Tony with his body. They shared a brief look and a full understanding: poor timing; safety first. 

With an eye on their surroundings, Steve crept away to where the two nearest dead bodies lay and picked up an automatic rifle to return fire on their immediate threat. At the first moment of safety, he turned the bodies over and searched them for weapons before making his way back to Tony. 

“Here,” he said and held out an AK-47 and one of the 9mm pistols for him to take. “Put the pistol in your belt at your back. Keep your finger near the trigger and the muzzle pointed to the ground—not at your feet: at the ground.”

Tony rolled his eyes and snatched the guns out of Steve’s hands, checking each of them over before tucking the pistol into his belt and settled into the AK-47’s grip confidently. “I design weapons for a living, I know how to handle a damn gun. Call the play.”

Steve sucked in a sharp breath and let it out in a low, steady whistle. Then, after a quick, full-body shudder, he tried to settle his head and gestured in the direction of the docks. “We go back and see what they’re doing. There should be a way off the island there, too. Stay behind me, and keep your head down—no heroics, Tony, you got it?”

“No heroics,” he lied, and together they moved out under cover of the mangrove palm trees.

*** 

Together they snuck back into the warehouse and climbed up to the rafters for a better look at the proceedings Raza was orchestrating below. Only two scattered guards stood between them and the central catwalk, and Steve took care of each with quick, steady hands, laying them down on the ground without a sound. 

A small fleet of trucks were parked near the center of the warehouse. The three largest trucks were being loaded with each of the remaining Warrior statues, while five smaller trucks were being loaded with a range of more conventional weapons, from automatic machine guns to hand-launched rocket missiles. Farther away from the action, a small pit had been carved into the floor of the warehouse. The fourth nuclear bomb was slowly being lowered into it, and a cement truck waited nearby.

“This looks bad,” Tony whispered. “You think they have a ferry?”

“Doubt they’d risk it.” 

Tony hummed quietly in agreement, and as one they muttered, “Key West.”

“No borders, no customs, straight shot to the continent,” Steve said and leaned back, trying to think through their options. 

“Three nukes, three trucks,” Tony did the math softly under his breath, making a critical inventory of the weapons they had on hand. “They don’t have enough manpower to carry out three even attacks. Their first target won’t be their big one.”

“This is a demonstration.” 

“Not the one they’re burying. It's been too dark, I doubt there are people within range,” Tony corrected and gestured for Steve to come closer. “But there’s five trucks full of grenade launchers, bombs, and automatic weapons. There’s only about two hundred of them.”

“What do you mean? There’s enough people for the guns and the trucks,” Steve said as he did his own math. “They’re likely coordinating with more people, too. Remember the pornography from Hammer, how you said the room was important? I think the room is how they communicate.”

Tony pursed his lips in thought for a long, silent moment. “If we get out of this, you have so much apologizing to do.” 

“Finally, a reason to put my knee pads to good use,” Steve said with a straight face, and got such a side-eye from Tony he quickly changed the topic. “What were you saying? About the distraction?”

“Why would you have guns if you’ve got a nuke?” Tony asked rhetorically. “If you draw attention to the bomb target with guns, you scare victims away and alert the bomb squad. Nuke targets are covert, grenade launchers aren’t.”

“They have a supplier, possible funder,” Steve told him, “we don’t know much about him—or her.”

Tony frowned at that information, and he looked at Steve for a long moment before turning back to the horrors wrapping up to hit the road below them. “What weapons manufacturer would have the most to gain from a US declaration of war?”

“Hammer, and your employer.”

“Hammer doesn’t have the brains to coordinate on this level without getting caught,” Tony muttered, scrubbing a hand across his face. “This is bad, Steve. If it’s Stane, it’s—”

Below them, the Ten Rings soldiers started slamming the trucks shut and gathering around the pit. Raza strode through the crowd of respectful men, shouting a fierce speech in his native dialect of Arabic. Tony and Steve watched as he pulled on a chain necklace until a metal arming key was visible, and around him his men roared their emphatic allegiance. 

“In ninety minutes a pillar of holy fire will rise in this place as a sign to our enemies,” Steve translated for Tony, “and a lot about how all will fear us and know us.”

Raza jumped down into the pit and with a great theatrical flair turned the key, arming the bomb. As soon as he was out, his men began filling the pit with cement, covering the bomb. 

“No force can stop us, we are now set on our course,” Steve continued translating as Raza talked, but eventually gave up. “Basically, they’re the world’s most powerful, badass boyband.”

“I didn’t vote for them.”

Steve suddenly grinned, and Tony couldn’t help but smile, too. 

“It’ll take me two minutes to disarm each bomb,” Tony said quietly, “but even if we steal a truck each, there’s only two of us and three bombs.”

“I’ll cause a diversion, draw them out. Move downstairs on my signal,” Steve told him after some thought. “Disable the trucks first; if they have to blow, let them blow in the ocean.”

Without a warning, Tony grabbed Steve by the collar of his slashed shirt and jerked him down close for a filthy, desperate kiss. Then, as suddenly as it happened, he pulled away. “Go. Give them hell.”

“I love you,” Steve told him one more time before he left. 

*** 

Steve found a grenade launcher. He applied it liberally. 

*** 

When the warehouse shook with the first explosion from the docks, Raza rounded up his soldiers and sent a large contingent of men out to take care of the problem. With all their noise, Tony ran for the exit facing away from Steve’s fire show and took the stairs down so fast his momentum almost carried him straight through the open warehouse gates. 

But that was as far as Tony’s luck took him. Raza seemed to have anticipated trouble, because when Tony finally made it to the trucks, three armed men were standing guard at each vehicle. Disarming the bombs individually would be impossible. 

Plan B: The bombs don’t leave the island. 

Tony crept around to another vantage point as quickly as he dared. He pulled the pistol from his belt and let the magazine slip, counted his bullets, then let the clip slide home.

Seven bullets. Twelve tires. 

He chambered the weapon, picked his target, then with a quick efficiency shot out two tires on each of the two trucks farthest from him. The guards jerked and swarmed around the collapsing trucks like moths to the flame, then as one they ran to the third truck, checking each of its tires to assure themselves of its safety. Half the guards fanned out and aggressively tore through the boxes and shipping crates nearby, but with all the commotion still going on outside the warehouse they seemed confused by what they were looking for. 

At least, that was what Tony surmised from what he could see from his hide-out in the footwell of the driver’s seat in the third truck. 

*** 

Out on the docks, Steve sprinted from cover to cover from gunfire. His AK was out, the spare pistol was already discarded, and Raza had learned to keep his men far away from him to keep him unarmed. 

The unexpected but familiar rumble of a Humvee caught Steve’s attention through the chaos of gunfire and the greedy fires lapping up the rotting dock, and he chanced a look over the shipping crates just in time to see the TOW missile aimed in his direction. 

He bolted out from behind the crates and ran straight for the Humvee, tearing a door off by its hinges as he passed; he leapt into the air and twisted to put the door between himself and the gunfire, letting the force of the rattling bullets propel him backwards, farther from harm. He hit the ground running, dashing behind a giant truck with the Humvee door held up as a poor imitation of his shield. His enhanced hearing picked up the faint whirring of the TOW missile as it tracked Steve to his new position. He stayed low on the balls of his feet and listened for the tell tale sign of the rocket for his one chance to sprint and dive off the dock for cover, but nothing happened. Instead, all around him the weapons were silenced and the shouting only got louder, angrier. 

Distantly, Steve worried that they had found Tony, but he reminded himself that they would be glad to find him—to capture that kind of leverage against him—and he had almost found comfort in his own assurances when he caught sight of movement on the far side of the warehouse. He turned to look just in time to see one of the three nuke-carrying trucks speed out from the other side of the warehouse directly into the ocean. 

As the trunk sank into the abyss several yards out, the man who had abandoned the truck's driver's seat scrambled upright on the docks and fired three shots at something in the warehouse. 

For the third time, the whirring of the TOW missile caught Steve's attention. He knew they were no longer targeting him. 

“Tony!” Steve shouted, waving his arms desperately in his effort to warn him. “Tony, run!”

Tony would not have seen the Humvee or the missile launcher from his side of the warehouse, but he twisted around at the first sound of Steve’s voice and sprinted towards him just in time. Behind him, several yards of the docks exploded on impact, but Tony was far enough away that the blast only threw him off his feet, and he tumbled and skidded across the ground uncontrollably. By the time Tony regained control of his momentum, it was all he could do to ducked for cover behind a small cluster of palm trees. 

In a futile attempt at finding another gun, another knife—anything to use as a weapon to give Tony cover—Steve finally noticed where he had taken cover. For better or worse, he was standing behind an old aircraft refueling tank. It would do.

The cover panel came off in his hand like a candy wrapper. In a matter of seconds, he cranked the pump and snatched up the nozzle of the fueling hose, and stepped out from behind truck to turn the high-pressure stream of jet fuel on Raza’s soldiers. 

Although it was inherently harmless, the blast must have startled them, because a handful of soldiers returned fire with their machine guns. The first man to fire at Steve did him the favor of igniting the AV-gas. The fire spread with an insatiable speed across the jet fuel, and soon Steve's fuel nozzle had turned into a flamethrower with spectacular reach. 

He turned the make-shift weapon on the soldiers and on the Humvee before dousing the near wall of the warehouse, trying to provide some cover for Tony to run. Soldiers scattered in the inferno, abandoning their orders and sprinting away in a desperate attempt to get away before the fire reached something less forgiving than bullets. 

By the time Steve picked up the now-familiar whirr of the TOW missile launcher as it turned back towards him, it was too late. 

*** 

Tony saw the missile strike the docks where Steve stood, and his world came to a staggering halt. His blood ran cold, his body was numb, and when the refueling tank exploded and the blast threw his body into the dark ocean, the weightless sensation of being airborne was the only reality he was aware of. 

When he was dredged out of the water and thrown up onto what remained of the deck, his body responded to oxygen by hacking up the water he had swallowed. He shoved himself up to his feet, staggering, his head still reeling from the blast, but he searched the docks, desperate for any sign of Steve. But where Steve and the refueling tank had stood was now destroyed, the dock splintered and gone. The lit jet fuel gleefully burned through the evidence of what had once been, and it spread across the ocean water in a canopy of ruin. Now there was only fire and darkness as far as Tony could see. 

Behind him a gun was cocked. Lorraine stepped around to his left, tapping the muzzle of her pistol against his temple. 

“My condolences to the widower.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you IMZY crew for your comments and help! I really appreciate all your help in making this a clearer story.


	5. Chapter 5

Barton leaned bodily into the cockpit of the Huey, waving his hand for Rhodey’s attention. “Hey, swing back: there’s someone in the water,” he told him. “Twenty bucks says it’s Steve.”

“What?” Rhodey asked even as he turned the chopper around. Behind him four other Hueys banked hard to the right to hold formation, following Rhodey’s lead effortlessly. “What the hell is he doing out here? We’re miles from any land.”

“Like I said: it’s gotta be Steve.” 

*** 

Lorraine had tried to kill him there on the docks. Tony had only stared down the muzzle she held in his face, shivering uncontrollably from head to toe without recognizing either fear or the cold of the ocean soaking through his clothes. Steve was gone. He was dead, and Tony had sent him away without a good-bye, without assuring him of how much he loved him, liar or otherwise. 

Would Steve have known that Tony forgave him? They had an understanding after escaping Samir’s torture, but cooperation in a crisis was not the same as forgiveness. Tony was angry—he was furious, and rightfully so—but it was not worth losing his partner. They would have worked on it: a second honeymoon, board games, couple’s counseling, an aquarium of tropical fish—anything, whatever it took to make _them_ work again. Would Steve have understood that in his last moments? That he wasn’t alone—that the man who once vowed to love him still meant it? 

Dread and regret numbed him to the outside world, and in the end he was only distantly aware of Raza’s intervention to save his life from Lorraine’s malice. 

“He can be useful,” Raza had said, sizing Tony up with a disgusted, loathing gaze. “Or he can be used. To kill him now resolves little.”

Léonide smoldered in anger, but she obeyed. “Walk,” she ordered Tony onward, directing him with a little jerk of her gun. “It’s your lucky day.”

With one truck in the ocean, Raza was down to two nuclear weapons. The activated device, already buried in cement, limited the time available to divine alternative plans. It was quickly determined that both bomb-carrying trucks were damaged beyond repair: there weren’t even enough spare tires available to fix one, let alone both, vehicles. Lorraine marched Tony around to the far side of the warehouse, and Tony watched on with a faint sense of satisfaction as the frazzled soldiers rushed to empty two trucks and condense the arsenal into three to free up new vehicles for the nuclear bombs. 

It wouldn’t bring back his husband, but if Raza and his men failed to get the trucks loaded in time to drive out of range, at least Steve’s sacrifice wouldn’t have been for nothing. 

A tall, heavy-set man rushed to open the door as Léonide approached the limousine, opening the door respectfully for them both. 

“Get in the damn car,” she hissed at Tony when he lingered in front of the opened door, cocking her pistol behind him. “Or stand there and do me the favor; I’ll take any reason to kill you.”

“Funny, then, how I’m still alive,” Tony mused, neither looking at her nor getting in the car. “Too scared to pull the trigger?”

“Akbar, put him in the car,” she told the driver instead, clearly eager to get away. Tony had little time to react before the driver’s paw of a hand had him by his hair, knocking his head forcefully against the top of the car. Concussed Tony was less problematic, and Akbar tossed his limp body onto one of the expansive bench seats. Lorraine quickly followed him into the limousine, her gun still cocked and in hand. 

“Get us out of here as fast as you can,” she told Akbar before he shut the door, “we will meet Raza in D.C.”

Tony rolled across the bench seat until he could push himself up to sitting. He groaned heavily, gingerly touching his forehead to see if he was bleeding, too. “Was that really easier than asking nicely? I’m just curious, I want to know: is that how you operate? Banging people’s heads in?”

“A page out of your late husband’s playbook,” she replied, checking her phone and barely paying attention to him even as she kept the gun pointed at him. 

It was a little difficult to see past the dark tint of the limousine windows, but in the distance he could see first signs of a new dawn rising. This would be his first sunrise without Steve, he thought bitterly, but he shook the thought before it consumed him. He couldn’t afford that, not yet. To his left the sun would soon rise, and to his right he could still make out an outline of the warehouse on the island. As slowly and quietly as he could, he glanced over his shoulder to look ahead of the car, but there he saw nothing but the Overseas Highway stretching out into the darkness. Tony was nearly convinced they were alone on the road when a glimmer of light reflected off a vehicle ahead of them. The way Akbar was speeding, it would not take long before one of the trucks would come into full view. 

When he turned back to face Lorraine again, he caught her openly studying him in bemused thought. “What did he even see in you?“ she demanded with a faintly disgusted expression. 

“Is this a homophobic thing?” he asked her in return, “or do you just think I’m not good enough for him? I mean, I don’t disagree—not that I agree, either, but it’s a little hard to tell what you’re asking about, you’re not being very specific.”

“The Winter Soldier is a legend,” she told him, snippy and reverent in equal measure. “His work was exceptional, extraordinary. Singlehandedly he changed the course of modern history. What business did he have with someone like you?”

“So it is personal then,” Tony deduced tersely, his lips pursed in distaste. “Lady, I don’t even know what the Winter Soldier is; my husband was a museum curator. I met him in a bookstore seven years ago, what is so fucking hard to understand?”

“And did he age in these seven years?”

Tony frowned, glimpsing a white truck in his periphery as they overtook it in the passing lane. He glanced out the window behind him, scrubbing a hand over his stumbling beard impatiently. “He’s in his early thirties. What dramatic change should I have noticed?”

“The Winter Soldier was virtually immortal,” she said with an unattractive sneer. “There is a serum in his body that healed him, it prevented him from aging naturally. I could have had access to that serum if you hadn’t destroyed Samir’s work.”

“Sucks to be you,” Tony smiled, baring his teeth. “You know, while we’re on the subject of the man you clearly have really weird, fucked up feelings about, could you give me my ring back?”

“Your ring is somewhere at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea,” she said with smirk. “Keeping your husband company.”

Tony resisted a snarl and forced himself to look out the window to his right, making a show (much of it real) of calming himself, grounding his temper by counting the number of trucks he saw following them on the dark highway. Two trucks trailed them; more than likely the trucks now carrying the bombs, he decided. He glanced behind him again, easily spotting another truck ahead of them. 

The extended bitter silence between them shattered with a sudden, startled shout of alarm from Tony, and across from him Lorraine jumped. It was all Tony needed. He pounced on her, grabbing at the hand holding the gun with both of his, pressing close enough to her body that the gun was pointed over his shoulder and unable to hurt him. With his advantage in weight and power, he managed to wrestle the gun out of her hand with little effort, though he did indulge in punching her in the face, vindictively savoring the fracturing crunch of bone under his knuckles. 

The commotion had caught Akbar’s attention, and Tony spun around in his seat before the driver had a chance to arm himself, leaving Lorraine’s unconscious form where she lay. Tony pounded through the division with the pistol handle, raining shards of glass across the driver and the passenger seat. “Keep driving, Akbar,” he suggested mildly, cocking the pistol to let Akbar know who had the gun. “Step on it: get us ahead of those trucks.”

Without a word and with both hands on the wheel, Akbar obeyed. They passed the second truck easily, and far in the distance Tony could see the last truck. “Faster,” he reminded Akbar urgently, “I know this car can go faster.”

Akbar stepped down on the accelerator with gusto and the limousine ate up the distance. The motor roared, and all around them the wind grew louder, enough so that when Lorraine got a chokehold around Tony’s throat, he had not heard her coming. His body tensed in response, and the gun went off, punching two holes through the car roof. She dragged him down to the limousine floor where his struggle was less effective, and however he batted at her head or kicked against the seat, she absorbed his fight. Eventually, his efforts grew weaker, and it was all he could do to try to hold his breath. 

Desperate for the gun, she let go with one hand and grabbed for the gun. Gasping for air, Tony still bucked and tried to shove her off, wrestling to keep the gun out of her hand. It went off two more times, and on the final shot, the bullet found a resting place in the back of Akbar’s head. Akbar slouched forward in the driver’s seat, his foot a dead weight on the accelerator. Without a driver, the car charged uncontrollably into the twilight. 

*** 

As soon Steve kicked up out of the water and grabbed onto the rope thrown down for him, he started climbing from the bottom and Barton started reeling from the top. They were dozens of yards closer to the island by the time Clint hauled Steve onto the Huey, sopping wet and panting from his effort. Steve pushed himself up with Clint’s help before he could shove up to his feet and lean into the cockpit. 

“Turn around!” he told Rhodey, pointing back in the direction of Florida. “Tony, he’s in the limo.”

Barton used the sharp turn of the chopper to roll up to his feet, and he came to stand beside Steve as they leaned into the cockpit. “Dude, what even. You’re welcome, you heavy fucking block of granite.” 

Steve ignored Clint’s griping and instead told him, “Call the Coast Guard: tell them to clear at least a twenty-mile radius. They may need airlift—”

“Airlift on standby, call in the coordinates,” Rhodey yelled over them, and Barton gave him a thumbs up to show he was on it. “You,” Rhodey continued, addressing Steve. “What the fuck were you doing in the ocean if Tony’s in the limo?”

“Tony first,” Steve insisted, pulling his soaked dress shirt off and accepting a fleece vest from Clint to scrub himself dry. “I’ll answer—” 

Barton was wrapping up his orders on the radio when he caught sight of the limos unusual trajectory through the window. “Guys,” Clint called to them, peering out into the twilight. “Rhodes, step on it. I think the driver’s dead.”

Rhodey shouted back at them to hang on moments before he pushed the Huey into a nosedive, cutting the most direct route down to the six-vehicle caravan driving full-speed for the continent. But seconds later, when they were only yards from where the limousine was snaking its way down a turn in the Highway Rhodey had to force the chopper up, only just avoiding two rockets that flew past them; the veering limousine avoided the missiles by sheer luck.

The first rocket struck the highway bridge several miles out, taking out two of the pillars. The second rocket ripped into the causeway in a plume of sprayed cement not far past the unbalanced pillars. The bridge groaned and buckled, collapsing in car-size blocks into the ocean until a whole section of the concrete motorway had crumbled into the darkness before their eyes. 

“Get the choppers on those trucks: hold them off,” Steve ordered Barton over the howling wind, giving his partner a meaningful look before turning back to their pilot. “And get me down to the car!” Steve told Rhodey urgently before he pushed away, climbing out onto the skids. 

*** 

Having broken off as much of the glass as he could in one go, Tony struggled to push and pull himself through the division into the driver’s cabin to regain control of the car. The broken shards of glass clung to the rim of the division like a vindictive set of serrated teeth, puncturing Tony’s palms and scratching down his forearms when he first scrambled to get his head through. His progress, hurried and irrational as it was, worked well at first. He pushed his torso through despite the stinging gashes across his shoulders and chest, and he was halfway into cabin when he got caught on his belt. Then, he could push no farther. Desperately Tony flailed and stretched his arms, grasping for wheel, but Akbar’s lifeless body was impossible to reach around. For one moment he got his fingers on the wheel and managed to straighten out the car, keeping it from veering wildly down the highway, but even that was a short-lived victory.

Between his struggle to move the dead, heavy-set driver, grab the wheel, and suck in his stomach in an effort not to cut himself too deeply through the abdomen, an absurd hallucination appeared beside the driver's side window. 

“Steve?” he wheezed, breathless and transfixed at the sight of his late husband hanging shirtless off a military chopper that was keeping pace with the limousine. 

“Tony!” Steve shouted at the top of his lungs, pointing at the roof of the car. 

Hearing Steve call his name startled Tony out of his daze. He scrambled to push himself back into the passenger side of the limousine and immediately punched the switch engaging the sunroof. As soon as he could, he stood up through it. “ _Steve?_ You’re—”

“Tony, the bridge is out!” Steve yelled over him. “Can you stop the car?”

“I can’t! Steve,” Tony added in a rush, “the last two trucks carry nukes!” 

Steve glanced back over his shoulder at Clint, and a quick nod assured him that Clint had heard. With that settled, Steve turned back to Tony, stretching himself closer at the same time that Rhodey pushed the chopper down further, angling the Huey so Steve might be positioned closer to Tony even as Rhodey struggled to keep the blades of the chopper a safe distance from the speeding car. 

“Tony, take my hand!”

There was no time to hesitate. Tony pushed himself up through the sunroof as far as he could, grasping for Steve’s outstretched hand. Mere inches separated them, but it could have been feet for how impossible it felt. Every unanticipated turn took Tony farther away, eating up precious time as Rhodey and Steve maneuvered and bent to chase his hand. 

“Come on, sweetheart,” Steve growled, stretching to close the space between them when Tony suddenly disappeared back into the limousine. When he returned moments later, he stood a few inches taller. The difference was enough: at the next opportunity, Steve closed his hand firmly around Tony’s, and he bodily pulled his husband out of the speeding car.

But the fresh blood coating Tony’s palm slid between their hands, and Tony slipped through Steve’s grip, clattering like dead weight on the limousine’s roof. Scrambling for purchase on anything, anywhere, Tony reached the rim of the sunroof with his fingertips and he seized on his chance. He barely heard Steve shouting his name over the pounding of his own heart as he painstakingly pulled himself back inside the vehicle. 

With less than a mile left, and so close to having lost Tony again, Steve barked a new order at Rhodey. When he saw Tony try to stand up again in the car, he waved his hand at him, signaling for him to stay where he was. “Tony: Stay down! Hang on!”

Rhodey straightened out the chopper and pushed down farther as soon as Tony’s head was safely inside the car, closing the four feet between Steve and the limousine. Instead of reaching for Tony, this time Steve closed his hand around the car itself. When they reached the gaping rift in the highway the limousine became airborne, it’s long back-end swaying dangerously in the wind as Steve strained to hold on, a human latch between it and the Huey. 

Inside the limousine, Tony had his hand wrapped around a seat belt, hanging on through the free-fall while debris of all sizes were consumed by gravity, everything from shards of glass to the beautiful crystals of whiskey and bourbon and champagne crashing with unsettling force against the bottom where Lorraine lay, crumpled and unconscious. With his weight braced against the tension of the seatbelt, Tony kneed his way up the steep angle of the hanging car until he could find his feet and stand up to look out the sunroof again. Only inches from his face he saw Steve’s familiar hand curled around the lip of the roof, and he followed the baffling sight up and up and up, past his rigid forearm, unwavering and steady, past the powerful swell of Steve’s bicep and the thick, cording muscles of his back and shoulders until he came to his face. That was his husband’s jaw, his ear, his frown of concentration, and Tony stood there, breathless and dumbstruck by the reality of his Steve carrying the car and all its cargo through the air. 

“Babe?” Steve called to him, loud enough to be heard over the propellers of the chopper and the wind blowing past them. “This isn’t getting easier.”

Tony blinked up at him, then rushed into motion. He found a crevice to brace one foot against in an armrest of the limousine, and with a kick and a heave he climbed bodily out of the car, holding on by the outward press of his legs on either side of the sunroof as the wind wrestled him, whipping around them both at dangerous speeds. With a firm push against the car, Tony raised himself the few inches it took to wrap his arm around Steve’s far shoulder, plastering himself against Steve’s back. 

Steve warned him before he let go of the car, then he wrapped his free arm around Tony’s body to effortlessly bring him around to stand on the skids beside Steve. Tony slouched forward into Steve’s chest, gasping for breath and clinging to his husband’s warm, familiar, and so very alive body. But even with his heart pounding for fear in his chest, Tony stretched in Steve’s safe grip to watch the wreckage of the bridge, taking in the whole unbelievable panorama of dawn breaking over the Caribbean Sea around them. 

When Tony dared to look at Steve’s face, he found his husband already watching him with dark eyes, drinking in the sight of him. “You’re alive,” Tony whispered, afraid to say it too loudly for fear of being proved wrong. “Or did I die, too? I mean, I’ll take either, but I—I’m a little partial to living; we haven’t even finished visiting all the States—”

The corner of Steve’s lips curled up into a crooked grin, and he pulled Tony closer to press a tender kiss to his temple. Tony closed his eyes as he was held close again, silent in his contentment. 

“We’re alive,” Steve promised him under his breath. “We’re alive, and we are going home.”

*** 

Rhodey brought the Huey down on the far side of the highway, and Steve was the first one out through the open door, turning to wait for Tony and Clint as they followed him. Tony gravitated toward him immediately, and they stood a foot or less apart, loosely holding onto each other’s hands by the fingers even when their attentions were elsewhere. Tony was turned away from Steve, his eyes on the cockpit of the helicopter, waiting for Rhodey to show his face, and Steve was already in the process of debriefing Barton. 

Around them uniformed officers were busy giving directions for the people who had been cleared of the twenty-mile radius, and in the distance the four choppers that had rounded up the caravan of Raza’s soldiers could be seen approaching the mainland with their prisoners and cargo. 

“You think it’s Stane?” Clint asked for clarification after Steve wrapped up his summary, already pulling out his phone. “Coulson’s got people at Stane, Inc., I’ll let him know.”

“Put that kid on it,” Steve suggested, “Parker? We only suspect Stane of supplying, but with the reaction Tony had it may be worth digging deeper.”

“What about my reaction?” Tony wondered innocently enough, though his back was still turned on Steve and Clint’s conversation. 

Clint snorted at the blatant admission to eavesdropping, and he glanced at Steve before going with it. “Parker’s on it,” Clint agreed, stopping his texting then and dialing a number instead. “He might be the only teen who can’t sniff out porn, but he was able to prove Hammer had nothing to do with it from his home computer, and that's a piece of shit.”

“Hammer’s incompetent,” Tony commented in agreement, and this time Steve tugged on his fingers gently. Tony rolled his eyes and looked at him with a cocked eyebrow that dared Steve to argue otherwise. “What? Tell me I’m wrong.”

Before Steve could offer an answer that was both honest and diplomatic, Rhodey marched around the chopper. Tony let go of Steve’s hand and walked right into Rhodey’s offered hug where he was wrapped up fiercely, and he clung to Rhodey for all his relief and his gratitude. Steve turned so his back wasn’t turned to them, but he respectfully kept his eyes down, giving them some privacy. 

“Don’t you ever scare me like that again, Tony,” Rhodey warned him, still holding him tight. “Next time, I’m telling ma so she can beat some sense into you herself.”

“Don’t ever tell her,” Tony whispered unsteadily, a hitch in his voice. Rhodey did him the favor of pretending he didn’t hear it. 

“Fine. I’ve got the Marines, the Coast Guard, and the DEA to answer to first,” Rhodey told Tony, “but when I come back, you owe me some answers, like why the hell your archeologist can airlift a limousine.”

Tony opened his mouth to answer, but no words would come out. Genius or not, there was no lie he could think of to plausibly cover for Steve. He glanced at his husband for help, but to his surprise, Steve only smiled at him, nodding his agreement with Tony’s inevitable conclusion: there was no lie left to tell. 

“Well, uh, funny thing—” 

Before Tony got further in his answer, Steve’s watch started beeping. Tony turned to him and walked closer with a concerned frown. “Is that what I think it is?”

Steve nodded his answer, instinctively wrapping an arm around Tony to keep him close. Without letting Tony go, Steve turned to signal Clint with a wave of his arm. “Barton: any minute!”

“Are we far enough away?” Tony asked quietly, “for that payload we need to be at least eighteen miles out, and even that would be—”

“We’re twenty-three miles out; we’re safe,” Steve promised, leading him a little further away until they were standing closer to the choppers than other people, leaving the work to Barton this time. With a twist of his body he turned them so Tony had his back to the island and he bowed his head forward to gently press their foreheads together. Steve closed his eyes, steadying himself against the rioting emotions Tony could plainly see playing across his face. “Still too close,” he confessed into the private space between them, “you should be home, safe in D.C.”

“ _Amor cuerdo no es amor_. For better or worse, to Death us do part,” Tony reminded him just as quietly, turning Steve's earlier strategy against him. “We're ..a mess, sure, but I'm here for the fight, Steve.”

Steve’s blinked his eyes open, and cautiously he dared to smile. Tony pulled back just enough to take Steve’s chin in one hand, tilting his head down to press a soft kiss to his forehead in forgiveness, then he gently turned Steve down to meet his lips in a slow, possessive kiss. Steve moaned in surprise, wrapping his arms eagerly around Tony’s body. They remained wrapped up in each other when the sky lit up in the distance behind behind them, and Steve brought his hands up to gently cradle Tony’s face as the rising blast filled the sky like golden fireworks, shielding their faces from the light. 

Apropos of nothing, Rhodey’s raised voice brought them back to reality. “So what’s the funny thing, Tony?”

Tony took one wobbly step away from Steve, who immediately reached forward to take him by the hips and steady him. “I—I, uh,” Tony started, clearing his throat in an effort to clear his mind. He glanced over his shoulder at Steve with a wry expression before biting the bullet. “You see, here’s the thing, right, he’s—Steve, he’s a spy, and I don’t know how deep that rabbit hole goes, but that’s not really ...not really important, because that’s not even the big plot twist, right, it’s not the big reveal, not even a little. He, he is Captain America.”

It didn’t matter how earnest Tony looked as he said it, Rhodey’s unimpressed expression didn’t even twitch. “Damnit, Tony,” he finally sighed, clearly annoyed. “The hell kind of story is that? And who’s his partner supposed to be, Batman?”

“You know what, Rhodey? Not cool. You’re my best friend and you’re not even giving me the benefit of the doubt here, I’m sharing something that is really sensitive right now—”

“—He doesn’t look like a man who’s pushing 100, Tony!” 

“—okay, so, admittedly I don’t have all the answers,” Tony conceded, his voice wavering a little in his own ignorance. “But—I mean, does he look like someone who could carry five thousand pounds in one hand?”

Rhodey threw his hands in the air, quickly moving from unimpressed to frustrated. “He looks like he’s hopped up on fucking steroids and allergic to shirts! Who knows what he can do.”

“Tony trusts you, and so will I,” Steve interjected coolly, his own lowered voice reminding them both to keep their voices down. “I will answer whatever questions you have, but for right now, that is all we can say.” 

“Right,” Rhodey drawled, crossing his arms over his chest and eyeing Steve with contempt. “Forgive me for not letting this wait for another fucking day, because that all sounds like bullshit. You wanna know why? Let’s take it from the top: this whole mess? It’s highly classified. Above my paygrade classified. I know that you’ve been lying to my best friend since you met him; I know that you are inhumanly strong and that you kill people from time to time; and I know that I really don’t like the way you treat Tony. So, no, Steve: say your piece now, or I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

Tony grimaced and rubbed at the back of his head, but before he had a chance to scramble for an explanation, Steve gently brushed his knuckles against the back of Tony’s hand, and gave him a reassuring smile before he addressed Rhodey. “If it’s immediate proof you need, Rhodes, shoot me. Or cut me if you have a knife, it doesn’t matter all that much so long as it’s non-fatal.” 

Rhodey stared as Steve took a few steps closer, his arms open at his sides in invitation. From a distance, Barton called Steve’s name, clearly seeing something suspicious happening, but it was Tony who was right there, and he hurried to get around Steve, placing himself directly in front of him. 

“Rhodey, we’ve talked about this—”

Rhodey never reached for his pistol, his face pinched in an unreadable expression until he finally muttered, “I’m not shooting your fool husband, Tony.”

“Tony, it’s okay,” Steve assured Tony, then looked at Rhodey. “Then a knife-wound; they heal much faster.”

“There’s a quota for how many times people can attack my husband in one day, Steven,” Tony snapped at him in sudden anger, “and I’ve already had enough for the whole fucking year. No—quiet—this isn’t a fucking vote. Disco.”

“Wait, hang on,” Rhodey eventually said in the tense silence between Tony and Steve, pinching the bridge of his nose as he wrestled with logic and reason to get every word out. “So, what you’re saying is that Captain America is...”

“Gay?” Tony supplied when Rhodey’s question trailed off, and he glanced at Steve with a mischievous smirk. Steve remained obediently silent, but his narrow-eyed glare told Tony loud and clear that he was not having it. “Right, yeah. Categorically, yes.”

But Rhodey shook his head. “No. You’re telling me _Captain America_ is vanilla?”

Steve slapped both hands over his face in a painful facepalm and groaned his frustration, taking a few steps away from them before he said something. Clint, having only just arrived, looked like he immediately regretted his decision. “Wait. What’s going on?”

“Is he Captain America?” Rhodey asked Clint, and like a man who was miserably out of options he waved his hand at Steve’s turned back for added clarity. 

“Oh, yeah—I know, it took me a while and I work with him,” Clint offered with a shrug. “Once you get over the whole super-human, super-healing part, everything else makes sense.”

“So I’m supposed to believe he’s been alive for nearly a hundred years and he knows a grand total of three positions?”

“—That was shared in confidence!” Tony hissed in alarm, then just as quickly added, “it’s _fine_ , I’m fine—”

“No. It’s not fine.”

The three of them turned in surprise to see Steve glowering several feet away, his fists forcefully resting against his waist as if in self-restraint. 

“It’s not fine, Tony,” he said again more urgently, needing Tony to understand. “Look, I couldn’t—that’s the only time I can’t really ...keep my cover,” he said delicately, but then he lowered his voice an octave to add a significant clarification. “I couldn’t then. When you didn’t know.”

Tony stared at him like an eloquent mute. When he finally found his voice, he could only muster two words. “And now?”

Steve never answered him. Instead, he turned to Barton and simply said, “Stane is yours. If you need help, ask Bucky. He owes me.”

“Bucky Barnes?” Tony and Rhodey blurted out in unison, staring at Steve in open shock. Clint and Steve side-eyed them wryly. 

“Oh man, who invited the fanboys?” Clint snickered, digging out a set of car keys out of his pocket that he tossed to Steve. “Beat it, Stark.” 

“—poor choice of words, I grant you, but I promise I’ll be fine,” Tony was telling Rhodey in a rush as Steve marched directly at him, not even breaking his stride when he crouched down to wrap his arms around Tony’s thighs and bodily carried him away. 

Tony’s eyes went wide with the thrill, wholly unaccustomed to Steve’s strength. He carded his fingers through Steve’s hair, tilting his head back to brush a chaste, lingering kiss across Steve’s lips. Neither of them could stop smiling, but Tony refused to let that stop him from chasing his husband’s kisses, or from teasing the swell of his bottom lip. 

“You know I love you, don’t you?” Tony asked breathlessly, stealing soft, playful kisses from Steve’s laughing lips. “I’m angry, but I love you. Is that messed up?”

“Not messed up,” Steve soothed, nuzzling into the soft skin of Tony’s throat. “Earning your forgiveness is my privilege.”

“Oh, I like the sound of that,” Tony purred, drawing Steve up closer against his body with a firm tug on his soft hair. Steve growled in warning, and Tony, fully aware he was playing with fire, smirked with self-satisfaction. “Where are you taking me, soldier?” he wondered, deliberately guileless. 

“That’s just it, isn’t it? I’m not a soldier, I’m not a spy, Tony. I’m yours,” Steve told him softly, a quiet rumble against Tony’s eager mouth, “and we are finally going home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, y'all! I hope you enjoyed it, I hope the last chapter didn't let you down. As promised, this is the last chapter of the story, but a bitty drabble-size epilogue will follow. 
> 
> My bottom-less thanks to the wonderful [IMZY](https://www.imzy.com/bringing_food_to_lab_stony) folks for your support and for your help! If you ever feel like a Stony chat, [I'm on Tumblr (as shetlandowl)](http://shetlandowl.tumblr.com/) more often than I should be.


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